


Tony and Loki's Infinity Stone Playlist

by auxbloood



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 70's Music, 80's Music, 90's Music, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Big Angst Ahead, Body Horror, Did I Mention the Slow Burn?, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fix-It of Sorts, Graphic Description of Corpses, Idiots in Love, In Depth Science, Infinity Gems, Infinity Stones are Sort of Sentient, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multiverse, Now with artwork!, Parallel Universes, Pining, Playlist, Pop Culture, Slow Burn, So Many Dad Jokes You'll Want to Die, Soulmates, Time Travel, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Swears, Will Probably End Up Over 100k
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22994356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxbloood/pseuds/auxbloood
Summary: All at once, those fluttering hands dropped, some bizarre revelation in the green of Loki's eyes. They locked with Tony's, a mad fervor within them. Loki moved in closer, fever, reverence, desperation all on display. He was. . . It was. . .The most shockingly intense, 'hello-my-darling' smolder of white-hot passion that Tony had seen in his entire life.//Somewhere, some time, in some infinite iteration of every possible universe, there's a Tony Stark for whom everything has gone completely, utterly, and terribly wrong.Somewhere, there's a Loki for whom everything went utterly, breathtakingly, passionately right.Neither of them think the universe could make things worse.They're going to be mistaken. And oh, how destiny is going to let them know it.
Relationships: Loki & Tony Stark, Loki/Tony Stark
Comments: 49
Kudos: 50





	1. Ground Control to Major Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter:
> 
> Sister Golden Hair | America, Hearts | Original Release 1975  
> Lavender Blue | Sammy Turner, Single | Original Release 1959
> 
> Please see the ♫ notation within the text for the perfect moment to begin playing the associated song in the chapter.
> 
> See Spotify Playlist linked at the end notes for the score.

* * *

**14th of July. Summer. 1975.**

* * *

"Goooood afternoon New York State! You're tuned in to 101.1 ISFM. Your destination for the latest rock sensations for the Newberg-Poughkeepsie area. Up next we've got "Sister Golden Hair" from America, staying groovy strong in the Billboard top 20. Why don't we take it away, DJ Kay?"

♫(1)

"Jesus, if they play any more hippie music I'm gonna--"

"Oh, leave it, Howard. I actually like this song."

_Well I tried to make it sunday_

_But I got so damn depressed_

_That I set my sights on monday_

_And I got myself undressed_

They're deep in the backwater, upstate New York state, 1975. Little Tony Stark, five years old and five teeth missing, was rolling his hand out the rear window of a 1968 Ford Galaxie. Slowly they drove, meandering with the Summer wind that danced across the dash in the warm countryside.

_I ain't ready for the altar_

_But I do agree there's times_

_When a woman sure can be a friend of mine_

Tony and the gap in his two front teeth were whistling along to the music, barely in tune, not quite making the high notes. The song was interspersed with static; the same that had chased them for the past thirty miles. It made his father furiously beat his hands on the dashboard, trying to knock some clarity into the machine. Tony giggled each time his father punched the dash, then swore, then heard his mother shush him for 'language.'

_Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you_

_Sister golden hair surprise_

_And I just can't live without you_

_Can't you see it in my eyes?_

Tony's eyes were wide out the window, staring high into the Summer sun. His childlike mind thought the clouds looked funny, so big, so bright, so poofy. No skyscrapers in the way of the view, not like home. A lot of them looked like dinosaurs, he thought. Or cows, or giant fish. Back in the city, it almost looked like you could touch them if you tried; like if he stretched only a little bit higher he could thread his fingers right through. Maybe they felt like cotton? Were they soft as the toy Triceratops Jarvis had given him last Christmas?

On that backwater road, Tony made himself a child's promise to fly up high and see for himself one day.

Little does he know that one day, decades even, he will.

_I been one poor correspondent_

_And I been too, too hard to find_

_But it doesn't mean you_

_Ain't been on my mind_

Tony had noticed his parents only argued three times for the past hundred miles. It felt like a record.

They were all happy.

Or at least, that's how he'll remember things in thirty years or so. Even if the recollection is wrong.

His mother had even cracked a joke or two when Howard'd screamed in anger, stuck doing 15 behind a hay tractor. They'd laughed and laughed at his 'country bumpkin' jokes until he'd had enough and pushed that Ford to 90 just to scream past the truck at the last possible second.

He won't remember just how scared Maria looked.

_Will you meet me in the middle_

_Will you--VRRP_

"Ok, enough of that crock."

Howard Stark leaned an easy hand over the back-seat of the Galaxie and turned his eyes from the road. Maria protested; he was driving with pointless danger today.

He ignored her, looking to Tony instead.

"Kiddo, let me teach you something."

Tony fidgeted and Howard reached under the dash, shooing Maria out of the way. Out came an opaque box, scratched, battered, used a hundred or a thousand times. His father opened it, earning an eye roll hidden strategically in the nook of the passenger window. Her sour expression for the next hundred miles.

Howard mumbled and he shoved the tape into the receiver. A few seconds of whirring, and a honeyed voice poured from the stereo set.

"Can't trust these hippie jockeys to throw on something decent. Take this as an opportunity, kiddo. Gonna give you some 'man's' wisdom; there's three things you need to know in life to always get exactly what you want."

Faint clicking, and the mood shifts with the lilt of the crooning that came forth from the stereo.

♫(2)

_La-a-a-a-vender blue_

"One;"

_La-a-a-avender green_

"Always act like what you do and what you say is exactly how things are supposed to be. You act confidant, even when your in deep shit, and people will walk over each other to do exactly what you say. They always want someone else in charge. Make sure it's you."

An onlooker could have caught the way that Maria's shoulders stiffened next to him. Little Tony did not.

_If I were king_

"Two;"

_I'd need a queen_

Howard jiggled the empty cassette sleeve as his eyes peered back at Tony in the rearview mirror.

"Music is God's greatest gift to mankind. Don't trust your cousin to pick your music at your wedding, and never drive more than thirty minutes from home without your own tunes. You think the dashboard casette player was the invention of some assembly-line schmuck?" Howard jabbed his finger in the wheel with each word. "Nuh-uh. Your old man, right here."

Howard thumped his chest proudly, narcissistically, typically.

"Thank God above I remembered to grab this," he said, wiggling the empty box, "from the Plymouth before we left or we'd be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with our ears bleeding to America."

Tony giggles because his father seems amused. And of course he does, because his father was the most important person in the world. He takes the words to heart, just like everything else Howard ever says, even if he won't always admit it.

He will never leave home without his music. Just like Howard tells him.

"Why we're even out here, I don't know. Apparently, some people feel that, I quote, 'once in your life you need a gold old fashioned, regular, goddamn normal childhood memor--'"

"HOWARD."

Fingers grip the steering wheel tighter than before.

"What? Oh, is it time already Maria?"

He checks the odometer.

"One-hundred measly miles is all you had in you before you start in with your--"

They argue.

Tony tunes them out and tunes in to the song, and their voices carry on and on. Before he knows it, the road stretches impossibly long, and the sounds floats away in a cotton candy haze. And little Tony Stark looked higher and higher as their voices rose and rose, and all he could see was blue skies and daydreams. Soon their shouting was nothing but a whisper on the breeze, and the words of the song filled up his ears.

_Whoa-oh_

_Who told me so_

_Who told me so_

_I told me so_

_If your dilly-dilly heart_

_Feels a dilly-dilly way_

_If you'll answer yes_

_In a pretty little church_

_On a dilly-dilly day_

It's twenty miles before Tony remembers his father's list from earlier.

"What's number three?" Came that ever-inquisitive voice.

The shouting stopped, the car was calm, old Sammy Turner crooned from the dashboard and his parents turned towards the little boy in the backseat. His face is nothing but doe-eyed wonder.

"What's number three, Dad?"

He picks at his already non-existent nails while he waits for his answer. His eyes on the sky. The pink and blue, and the sky above. The colors run together in front of him.

It's a dream.

The song changes.

_What's number three_

"Yes, Howard, dear, what's number three?"

_Won't you tell me_

"Won't you tell me, dad?"

_What's number three_

Pink.

Blue.

The sky is a rainbow river, and then. . .

Then red, and crimson, and as the memory of the road stretches ever on it runs like a river around them. The stars bleed into an onyx sheen that shines bright outside of the Galaxie as it rockets past Betelgeuse. Past Cassieopia the Queen, past Orion too.

They were drifting, they were dreaming, they were floating along. Floating and drowning in the tune of the song.

A prickling feeling begins at the back of Tony's mind. Like an itch, a scratch, an innate indication that something is. . .

The jukebox croons saccharine, and the prickling intensifies, and all at once Tony can hear his parent's voices together.

"What's number--

"What's number--

_What's number--_

SCHHHHHRRRT.

Tony flies violently to the right and his head cracks the rear seat window.

The car screeches to a bumpy halt. One thud, two thuds, three thuds, four, and five. Great big humps as the Ford careens and skitters on the star-spangled road, and the voices rise higher and higher. It crashes to a bone-shattering halt.

The prickling is a whirlwind of pain now, and as Tony shakes the starbursts from his eyes, he catches the reflection of a pained face between the cracks in the window. He looks back on himself. His real self, Tony Stark in 2013; he’s so old. So long to the little boy, a child's false memory that he realizes isn't real.

"Why, we're here, darling," croons Maria from the smoking front seats.

She slowly rips her flesh from the dashboard in front of her, stuck and tacky and crumpled into herself from the collision. She moves so languid, sagging, turning to her son with her cheeks ripped to the bone and her head caved in. It wiggles and shifts like gelatin as she moves.

The front seats are burning. The rest of her body is on fire. The skin bubbles in the incandescent heat. The flames make no sound.

She smiles with sweet decay and her ruddy eyes are bulging grotesquely from their sockets, and she turns to Howard too.

The music crescendos in the background and his father's face is compacted completely when he looks back at his son. Tony can see jagged little pearls of cracked teeth stuck deep into the remainder of his lips and the tip of each disgusting point punches him in the gut.

The great gaping hole in what used to be Howard's face parts at the middle, and a chunky black rot dribbles forth while the ruined maw speaks. A garbled choke of words barely comes out and his mangled hand rises to point behind them.

"Nnnnngh. Nnnmbr. Gthgree. Lyoook h-here and shhhee, son. Lyk hghhh 'nd sheee."

And as Tony Stark feels the cold threat of his nightmare grip him, he turns around in the back, to the cosmic horizon behind them. Anywhere but his parent's ruined faces. In the blackness of the stars he can barely see.

The road is gone.

There are craggy rocks and vague shapes, and something primeval begins to enter his mind telling him to run. To run fast, and far, and better yet wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!

All of a sudden the radio screams. Five distinct voices echo endlessly in the black. He can name every one. He wishes he couldn't.

_Look here and see_

_What's number three_

They speak and the stars twinkle their light, and. . . he can see now, but barely. Bodies. Bodies are behind them, and--

_Look here and see_

Tony knows the shapes, recognizes the faces. Every line, every belt, every curve, burned into his mind from mission after mission. Barton. Rogers. Romanoff. Fuck, was that Banner with the spear in his gut? With two?

'What's happening!?'

[wake up]

'WHAT'S HAPPENING?!'

_Look here and see_

All dead. All dead on the rocks and bleeding. They killed them.

[wake up]

Memories of a battle that feel so certain, so inevitable, yet they have not happened.

[sir, wake up]

No.

That was wrong.

He killed them. Their massacre was on his hands. He couldn't save them, he couldn't do ANYTHING. Pathetic Tony Stark was useless and could never save anyone, wasn't meant for the sacrifice play and they would never get up again and it was all his fault.

It was always his fault.

It will always be his fault.

_Look here and see_

_Look here and see_

[sir--]

_Look here and see_

_Look here and--_

_'SIR!'_

"CHRIST--FUCK ME"

Tony gasped and sputtered awake and flailed wildly to clutch the reactor at his chest. Confusion, desperation, fear rocked his mind, the nighmare echoing endlessly inside him.

Too much. It was too much. He needed air.

His hands clawed, scrabbled for purchase, desperate to remove every inch of the blankets that were smothering him while the acrid memory of abyss and putrid death perfumed his waking lungs. As he gulped in desperate breaths, he threw the stickling covers from his legs, his frantic pulse slithering wildly beneath his wrists. JARVIS gently awoke the bedroom around him, shutters lightening the bay-facing windows while he shivered endlessly. His head dripped cold sweat from his brow clutched vice-like between his fingers.

_'Sir, I detected a highly elevated heart rate and signs of distress so I opted to wake you. I was beginning to get rather concerned. . .'_

Tony offered no response.

_'Would you like me to fetch the usual?'_

He could barely hear him. Vague images of death still flitted behind his eyes in tumultuous succession. Even as they slowly melded together in the fuzzy post-sleep soup, he didn't yet dare to answer. It took almost ten minutes before he could manage to find his voice.

"Right, yeah. Usual. Sure thing."

Eventually from the hall, a little robot came with an orange and white bottle of pills and a crystal glass of water. If it had a name, Tony couldn't, at the moment, remember. It trilled little melodic beeps as it entered and it nearly toppled over when Tony grabbed the bottle from it. Offended, it threw a few disconcerted pings in his direction at his sheer and unadulterated rudeness and scampered off before harm could be done. Tony raced to uncap the top and desperately shoved the pills and water down his throat. He almost threw up, retching horribly as the jagged little thing stuck the whole way down.

From the feel of things, apparently he'd been screaming. Again.

Goddamn typical.

Fucking nightmares.

Tony sighed deeply, desperately, and exhaustedly resigned, so tired of this nightly ritual. Imagine; the wealthiest man on the planet couldn't even buy himself a dreamless sleep. And oh, how he'd scoured the globe for every legal (and illegal) thing he could think of to find it. Absolutely zilch, zero, nada ways worked so he could get some semblance of goddamn rest. Trust him, he'd tried.

For almost a half year now.

To be annoyingly exact. . . four months, thirteen days and some odd hours and Tony Stark hadn't gone a single spell of rest without waking up from some horrific nightmare. Dazed and confused and not remembering a single thing of what he'd dreamt of but the faint memory of death and terror and sometimes blood lingering on his tongue.

 _'Shall I make a call to Dr. Salter, sir?,'_ came JARVIS' voice, the same tinge of worry coloring the tinny voice.

Tony grabbed the empty glass from the table where he'd set it and threw it haphazardly towards the low rumble of JARVIS' voice coming from the wall.

"Stop trying to call me a shrink, buddy," Tony grumbled with practiced annoyance.

Goddamn, who programmed the robot to nag so much?

Oh. It was him. . . right.

He ran a hand through his hair again. He was sweaty, he was tired, he was done with the frustration of the mortal coil. But the little pill worked its way from his stomach to his veins, and eventually his ennui began to push to those black recesses in his mind. Tony grabbed the bottle from the bed beside him to move it to his nightstand, rattling it curiously as he listened to an absence of pill-type sounds.

"Actually JAR, more calling. Get the pharmacy to refill the script, make 'em do it double this time, you know what happened last month when I ran out. I'm sure Pep--"

A stifling pause the moment the syllable left his tired lips, and the bottle clattered out of his hand. It noisly bounced across the smooth floor to roll under the bed.

It was too early for this shit.

If his stomach wasn't churning from the dream before, it sure as hell was now. Tony tasted last night's Chinese slugging its way back into his throat and he hustled towards the shower. Things had gone from bad, to worse, to 'well, maybe today won't suck now that some hard drugs were in him, to 'DEFCON-10 shitty' now that the 'P' word almost came out.

And to think the day was already so off the rails at a mere 11:10am.

The spray of the shower wasn't even warm as he clamored inside, and Tony Stark with his day seventy-something o'clock shadow desperately rubbed his body to wash off the smell of his own fear. But as he raked and scrubbed, not even the stabbing knives of the cold water around him could break through the disgust and nausea that gripped him.

The Tony Stark that stood shivering, cold in heart and hurting, would look a phantom if anyone else saw.

Tony Stark was once a proud man. Once upon a time, he could snap his pretty fingers and get whatever in the world in less than sixty-seconds. Tony Stark was once a philanderer. An under the table arms dealer (by accident, but he digressed). A class-A lay. A man with an empire, and a universal legacy, and someone that you didn't mess with.

All of that; Tony Stark.

But Tony Stark wasn't much of anything, anymore. And in the shower, at a house at the end of a private Malibu drive, he hid the shame of his truth from the world.

He had crumbled away and scattered into the wind like some bad romance novel cliche. His perfect 'Stark' shell had been cracked, way back in the cave. Obadiah's betrayal? The first pieces had fallen.

Both hands were hacked off unceremoniously when Killian had the absolute sack to blow up his entire house and him in it.

In Miami, reaching over the precipice of a burning ledge. . . rip his heart from his goddamn chest, why don't you?

When they put her in the ground, he had shattered completely.

And now, no one in the whole goddamn universe, not Happy, not JARVIS, not even Jesus-A-Fucking-Christ in the second coming could pick up the pieces and put him together again. Here he was, in all of his glory. Humpty-Dumpty Tony Stark. Broken to bits.

His former self a myth, his current self a cosmic joke.

All he could do was take the pills, drink his booze, forget how much he hated himself until he passed out again; rinse, repeat, day in, day out. And he'd been so proud when the rampant alcoholism had been wrangled in after the Afghanistan debacle.

Well, what can a man do?

What can a man do in the face of absolute ruin?

A burning scaffold. An outstretched hand. His teammates dead. Strange rocks in outer space, constellations he couldn't name.

He thought he could weather the world before, laugh in the face of the maelstrom that was being alive. . . well, that was before.

And now she was gone. The only thing that had ever kept him together and functional in the first place had gone over a corroded blue edge and took his whole fucking spirit along with her.

Life without Pepper had ground to a resounding and complete halt. Calls were ignored. His messages were so full that JARVIS had terabytes of folders full of calls for no one to ever bother to listen to.

A crumbled man, in a crumbled castle, who was disappearing more every day.

Tony decided suddenly that he'd had enough of the frigid water on his over sensitive skin. He stepped from the shower, slowly, flexing his back and felt every knot and strain of his insomnia seeded deep in his shoulders. Did he dare look in the mirror today?

Some sarcastic internal back and forth and a brief glimpse in the mirror and he saw just how scraggly and homeless looking he'd gotten. Between the long locks of hair, Tony was taken aback at the maroon circles that stared back at him between them.

"I look like a depressed hobo begging for coins on Santa Monica."

_'An eloquent way to put it, sir. You do realize that stylists make home visits, you know? Concealer exists? It is the twenty-tens, sir, society has--'_

"Nope." Tony scruffed a grey towel raggedly through his too-long mop and bounded over to the walk-in closet behind him. "Didn't know. Certainly you realize, JAR, putrid is the new chic."

_'Indeed.'_

Tony smirked and he rolled his eyes while he sifted through shirts and scratched his beard with rough fingers.

_'Not to interrupt this simply inspiring display of positive self-esteem, but what can I put on the agenda for today, sir?'_

"Oh you know, bud. A little pity." Tony plucked a novelty band shirt haphazardly from. . . the good pile? The dirty pile?

The who cares pile? Shit, he didn't even know, pile.

"A little loathing." He threw on pants that he knew had something still crusted on it from the chow fun he'd eaten three days before, but couldn't bring himself to care. "A little bit of Erica by my side. Mambo number five, JARVIS. Just the usual."

Static met the soft patter of his footsteps, and as Tony waded out of the room and down towards 'Workshop 2.0,' he could have sworn there was some exasperated crackling coming from the walls.

After Miami, he had spent weeks rebuilding the Malibu house, brick by brick, until the new construction was a replica from top to bottom . Just like it had been before Killian.

Oh, and between the build, he'd given the Avengers and SHIELD a brand new tower, finished half-assedly between call after call of 'how are you doing, Tony?', 'how are you getting by, Tony?', 'when are you coming back, Tony?', 'the Avengers still need you, Tony.'

'We're so very, sorry for your loss, Tony.'

So he'd given them the whole fucking thing, brand spanking new, to stop everyone from calling with the same words. The same empty platitudes of remorse, offering nothing and begging him to come back in return. He'd flipped them double birds and told them to have fun saving the world without him because his was dead and gone and none of them lifted a goddamn finger to stop it from happening. They had theirs, and he had his. As far apart as opposite seaboards could get them. A shining tower, and the one place where he vaguely recalled the memory of what it felt like to be happy.

Even if he had to be some ghost, haunting the halls of his old life, Tony didn't want to be anywhere else. Everything they shared had been blown up, except for bricks and dust left behind in the explosion. They were just rocks, but. He didn't know how to let it go.

He didn't think he wanted to.

As his bare feet lumbered down the stairs, he was greeted by the emptiness of the garage before him.

No suits. No Iron Man.

No kidding himself that he could be someone who mattered when all he was was an idiot that had been too busy playing savior to bother really becoming one. Besides, he couldn't even look at the Iron Man mask without a belly full of guilt-ridden regret. So, no arc reactor tech was sizzling on a back-burner in the corner. No flashy new gimmick was waiting to be bolted on to 'Mark 1421323.'

Nope. Just 'the usual.'

Tony, at least four packs of the most piss-tasting beer he could get delivered, and the TV remote. And, most days, "Fellowship of the Ring" extended edition on repeat for the-

"JARVIS, can we get a count for today, pal?"

Tony grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge and flopped onto the couch while the movie flickered on in front of him. JARVIS' unamused voice chattered from the walls.

_'We have played 'Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring' now one hundred and thirteen times. Not counting continuations from pauses or times you have passed out covered in vomit whilst watching, of course.'_

"Huh." And just like that, beer one was down, and Tony subconsciously grabbed another. "Should we call someone about that, it's got to be some kind of record, right? You think Guinness would be interested? New York Times?"

JARVIS could have said some blithe question regarding his understanding of the futility and pathetic nature of reporting such a statistic in retort, but Tony ignored him. Tony didn't want to hear anything but the sound of the television and the movie before him. He sat, he watched, he carried on in the only way he knew how. And while the screen flickered with fire and torchlight, swords and the sounds of sharp screaming, the murky tendrils of his dream lapped at his heels. He kept on drinking. He could taste nothing. Nothing, not really, at all.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is centered around music, and inspired by my asking myself 'what would Tony Stark's playlist for intergalactic travel look like?'
> 
> Nearly each chapter will have a focus, or association with a piece of music, which will be uploaded to the playlist below for your listening pleasure as chapters are uploaded. Please use this as a companion!
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/132YLEaDzwvtSiUE4zeNNa?si=YvMKU1VxTLu0xNlaasSZXg


	2. Is There Life on Mars? [or, at the very least, inside of my messed up brain?]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter:
> 
> Life on Mars? | David Bowie, Hunky Dory | Original Release 1971

_'Sir, you appear to have a visitor.'_

Tony stuttered back awake, sweaty again, of course. He had barely gotten to the scene with the Balrog before he'd passed out involuntarily from his perpetual, sheer exhaustion. And now JARVIS was letting him know that the muted footsteps he heard coming down the stairs were going to be graced by the presence of his crusty eye bags and pilsner dried on his chin.

A few terse beeps on the key pad and the heels let themselves in, sighing, and kicking up a few forgotten pieces of trash across the floor before crossing the threshold of the workshop and coming to Tony's side.

"Dude, you smell like shit and this room smells even worse. Are you even bathing anymore or are you actually rolling in your own filth because I'm really unsure here, gotta say."

Rhodey uncrossed his arms and carefully stepped his way through a maze of cartons and boxes littering the floor to stand in front of Tony, blissfully ignoring the unamused pair of eyes Tony was throwing towards him.

"Really, man. You look terrible. Like 'photo in the dictionary next to the word disgusting' levels of terrible."

Tony snorted in deprecation and picked up the bottle he'd just noticed spilling on the couch beside him, ignoring him completely. He patted around himself, looking for the StarkPhone that had apparently been eaten by the couch because really, truly, it was still too early even at 4:43pm for any iota of self-reflective bonding.

Rhodey stood silently in front of him while Tony's hands searched. An impatient knee bounced up and down on the coffee table while he awaited a response. The only remark he received was a giddy cry of triumphant discovery as Tony unsheathed the phone from deep in the couch's bowels along with a few latent crumbs of dinners past. Tony chittered at the thing like a long lost puppy and flailed his arms to the sides of Rhodey trying to resume the movie from where he'd left off before the unwelcome intrusion.

Rhodey maneuvered in tandem, blocking his attempts, and after ten or so fruitless flicks, Tony huffed at him in resigned submission.

"You know, that's why I always kept you around, bud. Verbal support. You've got the most flattering way with words. You build me up so I can stand on mountains and all that," Tony grumbled with a wave of his hand, and the screen finally flickered back to life behind them.

A great primal cry roared from the surround sound and Rhodey heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes, then crossed over to Tony and ripped the rectangle from his hands. He shut the TV off yet again, earning an overblown cry of agonized betrayal from Tony's mouth while he chucked the thing overhand as far across the room as he possibly could. He turned back to the shadow of his former friend, shaking his head. Rhodey moved to the chair opposite Tony, whose arms rested limply at his sides and stared sarcastically ahead while Rhodey took his seat.

Rhody leaned forward, looking at Tony intently, and Tony internally made it a point to choose not to listen now that his day was officially, unabashedly ruined.

"Tony. This is worse than the last time I was here. . . and I sincerely didn't think that was possible." Rhodey spoke clearly and softly, in a way that Tony guessed was meant to 'dig deep and reach something within him.' "I know things have been hard for you. We all know. Well, if you'd let anyone else down here besides me, I mean, b-but that's not the point," Rhodey waved off.

Tony shook his head slightly and leaned back as far as he could go. He spread his arms wide across the sofa seat, wishing he was anywhere but here in the midst of Rhodey's 'mature friend' tone of voice.

"I know you hear basically the same speech from me every time, but you're gonna hear it again. It's been like, four months, man. And I know that's not that long, but, what, a year since New York? I'm not telling you to move on. Shit, I'm not that stupid. I'm not telling you to forget anything or let go of all the pissed off energy I know you have, but. . . I'm just begging you to turn it in to something that isn't. . . this," Rhodey gestured across Tony's person in a sweeping motion.

Rhodey hopped up from his chair and gingerly made his way over to Tony, sitting on the non-sticky seat beside him. Tony twisted uncomfortably away from him in petulance. Maybe if he acted like he couldn't hear Rhody at this angle he genuinely wouldn't. Amazing, he thought to himself, that the man continued to mis-understand the meaning of 'I don't need a goddamn pep talk.'

"Tony." Rhodey said gently, placing a firm, but un-hostile hand on his shoulder. "She's gone."

Tony's muscles beneath Rhodey's hand tensed and hardened and his annoyance went from lingering to volcanically pissed.

"She was the only thing holding your life together, I get that. She ran your company, she took your dry cleaning, she scheduled literally every meeting you ever had for like, seven years. I guess she wiped your ass too by the look of things."

Lava, he was lava. Hot fucking lava. Charred molten earth deep beneath the Earth's crust boiling at a thousand degrees and getting ready to erupt all over Rhodey's soon to be sorry ass.

Get your mind out of the gutter, Stark, Jesus.

"Don't."

Rhody tightened his grip. "No, YOU don't Tony. Don't collapse into yourself like this. Don't take the person she knew you could be and just throw every goddamn bit of it away because she's not here anymore to make you act like a functioning adult. Listen to the words that are about to come out of my mouth, because honestly? I don't know if they're going to come out again, man."

Tony turned then, eyes challenging Rhodey with an incendiary smolder.

"You had EVERY ounce of the man she turned you into inside of you even before the moment that she stepped through that door. But now she's gone, and she's not going to walk through it again. So you need to get a grip, and find that person inside of you and rip them back out of you again before you lose EVERYTHING that was important to you."

Tony didn't bother to remind him that he already did.

♫

Tony's fists clenched hazardously at his side and he looked indignantly towards Rhodey. His friend rose, heading back towards the stairs from whence he came. Tony made out some indistinct clattering and eventually Rhodey came back, heaving a gleaming silver case that he threw onto the coffee table between them.

Rhodey spoke again before Tony could, seeing his mouth begin to open in a retort to begin flaying him for why he was wrong.

"And for fucks sakes man, lay off the beer and ice cream you've gained like," Rhodey spread his arms wide before him, "twenty-five pounds. You're gonna go from Iron Man to Michelin Man at this rate, son. No damn suit's gonna go on that fat ass if you don't quit."

The briefest smile flashed on Tony's face before he remembered that he was being angry at the moment.

And so what? It's not like he was doing any Avenging lately. Not now. Not ever again.

He'd burned that useless fucking bridge the second he'd finished driving his iron and metal through Killian's smug grin and blew his atoms to ashes.

But despite all his still present rage, Tony couldn't manage to resist turning his gaze towards the case before him as Rhodey's fingers worked deftly at the clasps keeping it shut. His unceasing, albeit recently buried, curiosity was ultimately helpless against the mystery of a shiny metal box with something unknown inside.

The clasps lifted and Rhodey pried the panels of the case apart, revealing a glowing blue mist slowly ebbing around black casing foam.

"For me? Rhodes, you shouldn't have." Tony stretched forwards, spinning the silver to face him directly, eyes running wild across the scepter inside. "But you know I'm more of a fall than a winter, not sure the glowing celestial blue and silver is really my shade."

Rhodey snorted, rolled his eyes yet again, and swatted Tony's hands away before snapping the lid of the vessel shut once again now that Tony had gotten his look.

"Fury sent this over."

Tony learned back against the couch once more, folding his hands neatly on top of the reactor on his chest. "Figured it was something ol' Saint Nick had come up with. Not like you had the clearance to initiate maneuvering this thing." He paused for a few moments, foot fidgeting as it sat crossed over his left leg. "Care to elaborate as to why it's here and not in some deep dark spooky S.H.I.E.L.D dungeon?"

"He mentioned something about the dungeon they had available not being deep or dark enough. Plus something about some lab nerd almost walking out the front door with it a few weeks ago? Said he was getting. . . nervous. . . about some of the plans that some hot-shots had for it. But. . . for real?" Rhodey gave Tony an honest look.

"Thor's gone back to the whoever-the-hell-knows-where realm. World's suddenly got aliens, all the weaponry that comes with them." Rhodey shrugged neutrally. "We've got about zero idea what the hell is out there now and Fury's afraid of E.T between terrorists playing god with leftovers from New York. He's worried that next time we really need some extra help there won't be a deity or two conveniently lying around waiting to bail us out."

Rhodey motioned down towards the case and put his hands on his hips. "So he needed a contingency. Seeing as you're the only one on the planet who could possibly figure out how to get back into contact with hammer-boy in case of an emergency, he wants you to take a look. That scepter is some weird-ass alien mumbo-jumbo, and seeing as how we lost our only OTHER piece of alien mumbo-jumbo when Thor skipped back to space, this is the best shot we've got. Make some inter-dimensional cell-phone, smoke signal, whatever you can figure out." Rhodey looked down, giving Tony a pointed look. "You're the best mind we've got on our side and the best chance we have to give us some options, here. He doesn't care if you make some bridge, or road, or some long distance way of sending a text. He wants to be able to get Thor here, when we need him, the second that we do. With everything that's happened. . . we very well may need to."

Rhodey paused, and Tony wasn't quite drunk enough to miss the objective sense he had made. Tony's face didn't betray any expression, but inside his mind was reeling, categorically working through every reason why NOT to hand over the most powerful piece of weird magic technology the world had ever seen to a guy sitting on a couch with innumerable food stains on his clothes.

"Look. Obviously, nobody can force you to do anything. You stubborn-ass mother. But I'm begging you as a friend," Rhodey paced back over behind him, giving one last pat on his shoulders. "As someone who happens to like living on the planet and doesn't really want to get murdered by weird lizard aliens. . .Take a shower. Do some laundry. Crack a fucking blind open and get some sun you pasty piece of shit. And maybe decide to be Tony Stark again for five minutes and help us out with the defense of the universe again."

Rhodey smirked at him, and turned on his heel to go, a faint mumbling of 'no promises' tumbling out of Tony's lips while he bounded up the steps again. He heard a faint goodbye shouted down to stop by again soon, and Tony remained statuesque, eyes squarely in front of him. He sat still for some uncountable minutes with his gaze glued onto the gleam of the polished silver under the dim lights.

Tony suddenly remembered the StarkPhone flung in the corner, almost as if his brain was actively refusing to acknowledge the past thirty minutes to purge it from his mind. He got up sluggishly and pilfered around the back of the room until he found what he was looking for. He turned back towards the berth of the room from the corner, eyeing the zigzagging bottles, cartons, everything thrown haphazardly across every surface. It was chaos, unbridled and smelling vaguely of takeout and--

Tony blinked rapidly, suddenly and painfully aware of the fact that his best friend was just in his house, handing him the only keys available on the planet to the 'mysteries of the universe' kingdom, and all he could think about the entire time was PBR and Frodo.

Sigh.

Rhodey was right.

Rhodey was right, he knew, with a formidable effort to admit his failing, and he felt a small stream of shame enter the flood of his thoughts. He was right down to the fucking letter and he was a pathetic piece of shit, just like he said. To confirm, he even gave a cursory sniff towards the vicinity of his armpits and winced when he realized his clothes did, in fact, smell something between a dumpster and red-tide at the pier.

God, he wasn't ready for this. The tidal wave of good-natured recovery story that always accompanied the mighty after a pithy downfall. Tony could swear it was some kind of bizarre Hallmark movie he'd walked in to because he could clearly see the lines in the sand.

He'd already got the pep-talk from the spitfire side-kick. Now the audience would be waiting on the hero to chin up, pull up his bootstraps, and show the world that he always knew he was decent all along.

Jesus Christ he wasn't cut out for this 'second act' schmooze. But at this point. . .

Drunk in his basement every day, or only half-drunk messing around with a mystical space rock for science sakes?

Was it even a choice, really?

"JARVIS."

_'Yes, Mr. Stark?'_

"Remind me to burn these."

_'With inexplicable pleasure, sir. If I may, at Colonel Rhodes' suggestions, shall we begin preparations for hosting the scepter in the workshop? A professional, fully licensed cleaner to start, perhaps?'_

Tony walked back towards the table slowly, eyes focused on the case yet again. He still thought this was a bad, horrific idea to hand something like this off to him considering his tendencies of late, but. . . He rubbed his hands together, skin itching and teeming with energy and popped the thing back open.

His eyes stared down at the cerulean orb sitting at the middle of the scepter and he physically felt the rusted cogs of his brain churning as they began to spin again. He hadn't felt this way in a long time. Months, definitely. Maybe the better part of a year, even. Since New York he really hadn't been right. It was like he had been drowning in an ocean of jelly, unable to break the surface and someone had just ripped him out and given him mouth to mouth.

For the record, the thought of mouth to mouth with 'practically my family' Rhodey was some real nightmare-fuel inducing shit.

But at least he felt SOMETHING again.

He didn't feel perfect, he didn't feel like remotely close to the old Tony. But there was a tiny little flame he could feel in him, some little candle burning for the memory of the workshop teeming with the smell of ozone and welded metal. For late nights with no sleep until he finally perfected the thing he'd been working on for days on end. For the moment where everything 'clicked' and he knew he'd done something right.

No amount of creepy evil alien energy schmoozing off of the thing could dampen his spirits now that he had the promise of one thing. The one thing that could burn through loss, or dead girlfriends, or the pathetic state of his entire being.

A project.

"Don't bother, gonna do it myself. You break it, you buy it kind of thing. Plus I could use some good old fashioned physical catharsis, don't you think?" Tony stood from his crouch and began to weave and bob between the trash on the floor, in hand the nearest dust bin.

_'I can advise that you have received a sum total of thirteen hours of sleep within the past five days. I do not believe it wise to physically over-exert yourself until we perhaps address the issue of your insomnia and you ingest some vital nutrients. Shall I place that call to Dr. Salter after all?'_

Tony sighed, peeling some long rotten thing vaguely resembling a banana peel off the floor to the left of him. "Guess if we're going to try and not act like a pathetic trash goblin we might as well go balls to the wall on the whole 'self-rediscovery' angle. Do it, week from tomorrow, preferably."

_'Right away, Mr. Stark.'_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is centered around music, and inspired by my asking myself 'what would Tony Stark's playlist for intergalactic travel look like?'
> 
> Nearly each chapter will have a focus, or association with a piece of music, which will be uploaded to the playlist below for your listening pleasure as chapters are uploaded. Please use this as a companion!
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/132YLEaDzwvtSiUE4zeNNa?si=YvMKU1VxTLu0xNlaasSZXg


	3. Normalcy is a Cryptid and it Lives on the Moon and Antarctica

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this Chapter:
> 
> One Thing Left to Try | MGMT, Little Dark Age | Original Release 2018

It took Tony nearly ten hours to see the floor in the workshop again, and by the time he was done, he was fucking exhausted. Afterward, JARVIS had haughtily demanded he eat something lest he 'accidentally lock the basement in permanence,' so Tony sat looking pridefully over the pristine concrete while he munched on something he vaguely assumed was a vegetable.

As he ate, Tony was aware of the cyclical path before him. The roller-coaster of ups and downs of his life. This was how he had always been, for as long as he'd remembered; aimless, pointless, somehow always actively engaged in ruining his own life when there wasn't someone behind him kicking his ass into gear or threatening his ego directly, with sudden starbursts of inspiration between. When there wasn't that fire, that challenge, that. . .

Hell, when there wasn't Virginia Potts standing behind him with an unamused glare and a data pad questioning every decision of his life he was a complete mess, and he knew it. It was so easy to let go, to not care, to not give a singular fuck without her. Tony was anything but blissfully unaware of how much of an asshole he'd been acting towards himself and everyone else the past half-year. The day had felt like some proverbial first-step in an anonymous program on 'how to get over your deceased girlfriend and move on with your life.' And it frightened him. Tony didn't know if he wanted to move on. Hell, he was basically mortified at the mere thought of waking up one morning without immediately reaching out to hold on to her while he rode out the aftershocks of his nightmares.

The truth? He didn't know how to live without her. Without her ghost, haunting every step behind him.

And fuck me, he didn't know how any shrink or hypnotist or conveniently sized pill was ever going to be able to get rid of those. It didn't take Einstein to determine that he had some deeply seeded psychological trauma waiting for him.

Yippie. Can't wait to discuss that in therapy.

Tony sighed, and lifted himself off of the counter throwing the remnants of dinner into the trash (and specifically not onto the floor).

"Life's little miracles," he joked in a half-asleep haze, and dragged himself back up the stairs, pausing briefly for a nightcap at the bar.

Hey, just because he decided to clean didn't mean he had to kick his old friend Jim Beam out just yet.

He traded his filthy clothes for something he made sure was washed and waded back into the room towards the broad glass windows that overlooked the Malibu skyline. He lifted a heavy hand to the window pane, and peered anywhere but the vicinity of the bed. Tired as he was, he wasn't quite ready for three to five hours of hellscapes just yet. It seemed like a depressingly sour cherry on top of an unexpectedly brilliant day. Tony raised the glass to his lips and drank, stalling, mind drifting.

Maybe he should throw the whole thing away. The bed, the house, everything in it. Start over. Nuke everything that Pep's memory had touched and go tabula rasa. Buy some pretty piece of land on the East Coast and--

He fingered the short tumbler of whiskey, raised the glass and poured the remainder of the amber liquid down his throat.

"One thing at a time, Tones," he told himself and swayed languidly towards the sheets. "One thing at a time."

He pulled the duvet over his head and muttered a quick order to JARVIS to turn off the lights and set some alarm. Early, but not too early, and felt his eyes droop closed the second that his head hit the pillow beneath him.

* * *

Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, Tony slumbered. And just like every other night, the death, and smoke, and terror came. Sometimes it started in the car; a boy, a mother and father, a time just ten years old.

Sometimes it started somewhere unknown, in a crowd, in a city he couldn't name. Walking amongst the living aimlessly until the throng parted and the dead eyes of his former friends replaced all others around him, and thousands of screaming faces spit blood and bile from their mouths.

In others. . . never ending flashes. Scents, fleeting glimpses in his memory. Ones that cascaded in such rapid succession that his heartbeat felt like it would break out of his chest.

And like all others, they would end the same. No matter how they got there, no matter the path taken, all his dreams coalesced into that starry rock and bloody precipice. Where he would see them defeated, and broken, and just like every night before the last, he would wail in agony as they fell.

Pepper was there tonight, watching him from the sidelines, drifting between the scenes. Untouched, perfect, exactly the way he liked to remembered her. She never moved an inch, only watched him with piercing eyes. When they were all dead, he turned to her. From far away she mouthed something towards him, but what the words were, Tony couldn't tell. All he could hear was the ebb of the cosmos, and the soft patter of blood dripping from rocks somewhere, somehow, beyond all known things.

* * *

The days fly by. Supersonic.

Between them, some rough patches spent drunk at the bottom of the shower crying, some repentant episodes wallowing in self-loathing and misery, but. . .

It was less than two weeks and Tony had the workshop running full-swing again. Albeit wasn't quite the menagerie of tech and toys that he'd had before since the sports cars and Iron Man suits weren't dotting the walls, and yet. . .

It was enough.

And he was absolutely and irrevocably obsessed with the weird and inexplicable source of energy that coursed and ebbed from the scepter. In the bowels of the mansion he'd hooked up a synaptic spiderweb of wires and probes, working day in and day out to parse the best route to his goal.

"JARVIS, run me through that simulation again considering elements conducive with piezoelectric currents."

Tony's hands flitted across the holograms on the screen before him. He listened to JARVIS rattle off the molecular densities and interplay of differing elements while he rejected model after model. Tony was far from an idiot, and early on he'd realized that the level of tech required for the job at hand was far out of his leage, but when had that ever stopped him? All of his research energy was focused on portals. Dimensional skipping. Basically, blasting a hole through time and space to get to the other side just like Loki had managed in New York. Folding the space time continuum.

(Even if the thought of staring into that black again made him still want to throw up in his mouth a little.)

He'd been toying with variables on channeling the energy through all possible means, scraping through S.H.I.E.L.D's files on Dr. Selvig's original design, and it admittedly wasn't much. He understood the why, and the how, and the general reason behind the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter the test the damned thing was still a head scratcher.

Tony Stark was not made for head scratchers.

Each pathetic attempt to fabricate a functional simulacrum had resulted in various explosions ranging from 'teensy tiny' to 'nearly nuking the joint.'

Needless to say, DUM-E had been busy.

Needless to say, Tony was about to lose his shit if the universe thought a little space rock was going to get the best of him.

Especially not after everything else had.

So, in the week that he'd been tinkering, he'd come to realize a few crucial points of information.

First, the powerful, unidentifiable source of infinitely renewable energy nestled underneath the crystalline shell that held the middle of the scepter together was FAR more powerful than he and Banner had originally theorized, and no amount of molecular scanning or analysis could tell JARVIS' scanners exactly what the thing inside was made of.

Second, that it had enough juice to power every single piece of electronics hooked up to the grid in the Western Hemisphere, and probably more, if it wanted to, and it wasn't even half as powerful as the Rubix Cube of Destiny.

Jesus, think of what he could be accomplishing with the Tesseract itself. Chuck the arc-reactor in the trash for gods-sakes, his tech couldn't even touch the potential.

No wonder the 80s hair-metal space-god had been so adamant on manhandling the thing.

Third, speaking of the Paul-Mitchell space deity, the man was a complete idiot for not recognizing raw energy he had been holding under his fingertips. A few half-assed blasts barely aimed to make a scratch? Tony snorted under his breath while he moved some lasers into place. It was obvious that channeling the crystal's energy into a laser-stick was NOT the optimal way to use the thing. Besides, the crystal housing was blocking the true source of energy, and he needed the thing in its rawest form to get anywhere.

"If it ain't broke," Tony muttered underneath his breath before pressing firmly to initiate the removal sequence. The room sparked and danced while the cutting went to work at cracking into the casing, and Tony decided to mutter some more.

"I mean, lightly charring three blocks of uptown New York City, really? Fucker probably could have just fried us and the whole damn planet and lorded on the crispy bits left over."

The room glittered brighter and brighter and with a resounding POP, the thing shattered into pieces. Tony barely dodged them as he ducked behind a wortable. Eventually, the smoke and starry dust settled, and he walked towards the tangerine glow that now ebbed and wavered in the middle of the room. A little celebratory 'yay' pipped out from him as he bounced on his heels.

"JARVIS, analysis is go."

A robotic arm shot out and probed further into the corona of the tiny stone, encapsulating it in a small metal setting. A few contemplary seconds later, and JARVIS' tinny voice sprang from the wall.

_'I continue to be unable to detect the atomic origins of the stone itself, and the material is nigh impregnable. Molecularly, it simply does not consist of elements recognized on our periodic table. However, I am receiving high-decibel readings that match sub-sonic recordings during the New York incident. It rather seems to be emitting, if I may, multiple unique harmonic frequencies. There are . . . thousands of them, each with a unique data point.'_

"Bring up a visual on those wavelengths."

JARVIS scanned the stone and before Tony, the room was lightened in a cascading flow of energy to and from thousands and thousands of bars of light. They danced and ebbed before him in tangential waves, coming and going, displaying various peaks and valleys. Little alien mountains dancing an intergalactic symphony.

"These look like. . ."

Tony pauses, swinging back and forth between the silent sea of sound.

". . .You know those orchestras that play ancient music from Greco-Roman vases and all that?"

_'I cannot say that I have indulged in such a genre of music.'_

Tony rolled his eyes, hands already moving with the electricity of an idea. Eventually he finds what he's looking for buried deep beneath an ocean of spare scrap parts; a little coiled receiver that could have been ripped from a 1960s ham radio as far as he was concerned. He gave it a little spit, a little, shine, and begins to strip the wiring so he can shove it into one of DUM-E's side ports.

"You think if you analyze this you can play out these sound waves?"

_'You want them relayed all at once, sir?'_

Tony bit his lip and shrugged his shoulders non-comittally, fiddling under the cusp of DUM-E's chassis. "I've got a theory. Pick a couple that speak to your inner Victrola."

. . .

_'I suppose I'm ready when you are, sir.'_

"No prob," Tony muttered, still wrangling with some reds and blues deep in the robot's bowels. Satisfied, he finally raised, and saluted the mechanical arm with a resounding 'good-job-pal' slap.

"Take 'er away DJ-DumDum."

A pause, a few more, and one by one, sounds. The first five were some impossible to parse alien garble, some galactic warbling that came straight from a trash compactor and disturbed Tony's brain on a cellular level. Ok, something to be expected, and he motioned for JARVIS to try for round six, fingers crossed behind him. Things were ever so slightly better that time, sounding something between the bumping of a broken washing machine and a four-man foghorn band, not nearly as ear-splitting. Tony's curiosity was on fire, and he'd work through the entire cursed space jam discography if it meant he was about to communicate 'Close Encounters' style with some far away race of beings.

If he could just get some feedback from something he could recognize, something that sounded remotely intelligent on the other end. . .

Bada bing, bada boom; there's your cosmic walkie-talkie Fury. Suck my whole ass.

After that, it would only take mere calibration to be hooking in to 101.1 Asgard.

"Do me a favor, just rip all of it and start parsing through the white noise to see if you can get anything remotely resembling a speech pattern and we'll start from there."

_'This will likely take some time.'_

"Well. . ." 

♫

Tony gave another firm slap to DUM-E, commanding him to not move an inch for however long it takes JARVIS to make the rounds.

"At this point, there's only one thing left to try."

_'And that would be. . .?'_

He walked back towards the couch, pausing briefly at the mini-fridge now stocked with seltzers, waters, low-calorie-barely-an-excuse-for-a-drinks, and grabbed the first thing his hand touched, not bothering to read the label. He plants his ass firmly on the couch and rips the tab, and he's proud. The sip is a victory.

Eugh, it's some weird pseudo-berry flavored froufrou, but what the hell, Tony could get down with fruity, and it tasted like a win nonetheless.

"Persevering, winning, shoving whatever ham-radio-satellite-monstrosity this ends up being right in Fury's ugly mug and letting a good old 'Tony Stark Invention' tell him to go fuck himself. No matter how long it takes."

_'Well, then, I shall get started immediately.'_

"Always got my back, buddy." Tony raised his glass in salute, and took one long, ice-cold swig, leaning long and sinking into the cushions behind him. "Leave some of them playing while you work through 'em, wouldn't hurt to have a second pair of ears in case something gets interesting."

JARVIS gave a cursory sound of agreement and left the sounds floating ambient across the room. Tony leaned back, satisfied with himself, satisfied with his progress, his mind, his next few days filled with weird and wild animalisms from across the universe. He looked up at the ceiling, the wavelengths of the cosmos ebbing around him, those little garbage noises from a million million miles away, and hoped that through that galactic noise ET would be waiting on the other side.

He takes another sip.

He closes his eyes, tuned in, turned up, dialed to nine-thousand.

He realizes he can taste again.

* * *


	4. English, Motherfucker, Do You Speak It?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter:
> 
> M1 A1 | Gorillaz, Gorillaz | Original release, 2001

He'd been drifting in and out of sleep for the better part of four hours when JARVIS gently rustled Tony back awake.

_'Sir, I found something that you'd like to hear. I apologize for wa--'_

"Don't worry about it," Tony said slovenly, pushing his psyche past the crust and dust of the tumultuous nap.

He stretched leonine, and padded over towards the workbench where JARVIS had one undulating wave risen over the light table. Immediately, Tony noticed the highs and lows, the craggy peaks of musical mountains. It was unlike the simulations he remembered earlier, those more rounded mounds that sounded like hellspawn. His inner scientist knew without a shadow of a doubt that this one was different. He'd found what he was hoping for.

Bingo.

Bullseye, you old man.

He's got Xanadu on line one.

"Well don't wait for me to actually press a button or something JAR, by all means." Tony yawned, waving his hand emphatically towards the tangerine glow.

A few more seconds, and the waves gently flattened to a cohesive line, a sound bite from the stars. Some weird part of him felt like he was violating some intergalactic 'anti-piracy' PSA. Like he was flipping the double birds, saying 'oh, you didn't want me listening in from across the universe to prove my point to myself and all the gods and everyone who's watching? Too bad. Welcome aboard. Your ass is mine, now. Welcome to the shit-show.'

The stone glowed gently in it's circular setting, and JARVIS fired up the speakers. Tony couldn't help but brace himself in case the noise was as cacophonous as before. But with his hands clamped, he couldn't hear a damn thing. Before he could pose the question at hand, JARVIS read his mind, already providing his answer.

_'It's rather quiet, I must say. Unlike the others, I did have to run the sample through multiple filters to boost it to a discernible level. There's more that can be done with the quality, but I gathered you were rather eager. You'll have to be intent to hear it.'_

So Tony crept closer, ear right up to the stereo.

Random static. Wet noises, almost a kind of cyclical rattling, at first, and then ever so quietly, the sound of someone. . .

"Humming?"

_'Yes, the initial portions appear to be some labored breathing, along with scattered humming.'_

"Initial portions?" Tony cocked his eyebrow.

_'Wait a few moments, if you will.'_

So Tony stood bouncing up and down, nerves frayed with adrenaline. And you might have thought, 'well, Tony already faced aliens, space-gods. What could possibly get him excited about some static-laden humming from across the universe?'

And Tony would tell you that if you even had to ask what was interesting about parsing interstellar transmissions in the first place, you sir, could politely, yet firmly, leave.

_\---f - w-- --ng, -i--- -i--y, I-- n-- - -u--n_

Holy hell, it was. . .

"SINGING?" Tony balked, incredulous. Goddamn, that ballsy Stark brand of luck.

Not that he had at all doubted himself, but you know, he'd practically landed a spacetime opera on his first try, thank you very much.

He really almost couldn't believe what he heard, and quieted while the garbled musing poured softly into the room around him. The noise was entirely unrecognizable at first, doubtlessly in some other alien vernacular. He only caught scattered syllables. Tony blinked rapidly, mind absorbing every possible detail, racing to and fro, wishing he knew what distant planet he was tuned to.

_\--ve-d-r --ue_

And that put an idea in his head. Maybe the stone was really more useful that he thought of after all. These were random frequencies from thousands of galaxies away. Maybe he could. . .

_L---nd-- g--en_

Nah, that wouldn't work, what the hell was he thinking? But at the same time, signals have a source. And a source is a location. And couldn't radios work both ways? If he could dig around, maybe there would be some code, some algorithm he could use to re-transmit a signal back through. The thing was a hivemind anyway, there's no way it was too simple to parse that data. There wasn't any reason why he couldn't use it to dial in to different stations and figure out exactly where to broadcast his signal, to not have. . .

_Then I-- -e k-ng, --u'll b- -y que--_

. . . to not have. . .

_Lavend-- blue_

. . . to not. . . wait, what?. . .

_La-a-a-avender gre--_

"Hold the fucking phone JARVIS, play that back. Can you scrub this any cleaner?"

_'I did say to wait a few moments, did I not?'_

And as JARVIS worked his magic, spun the tape back, Tony clambored back to the speaker. He practically fused his eardrum to the soft felt cover. Surely not. Surely he had heard wrong.

The next sounds were crystalline.

_Whoa-oh_  
_Who told me so_  
_Who told me so_  
_I told me so_

"Well I'll be goddamned." Tony whispered, shocked, rocking back on his heels.

_'What is it?'_

Hell, how could Tony not know what it was? The lyrics; Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner, 1959. His father's favorite singer, his favorite song, even. The man had invented an entire portable casette bay just for the sole purpose of running the mixtape with the album into the ground. And here was ol' Sam, from the mouth of some alien, in clear, perfect English, crooning to him from halfway across the universe.

Tony didn't answer, only stood, stunned.

There. . . wasn't really a plausible explanation for this. Why in the world would something so Earthen be playing to him, right now? And something so personal, at that. Tony felt gooseflesh break across his skin, halfway from the eeriness, halfway from the excited adrenaline.

In his heart, it felt like some pre-ordained destiny, some divine confirmation that he was on the right track, even if he didn't believe in such a thing. In his science-brain, he knew that there must be a simple explanation. Occam's razor and all that. He was probably picking up some signal from Earth itself, not a trillion miles away. Yes; that was the most rock solid explanation for the coincidence.

"JAR, we're going to want to figure out how to rip the geo-cache from this thing ASAP. These signals are coming from somwhere. This could just be some feedback from a golden oldies station in Saskatoon for all we know, and you know what happens when I get too excited too early."

_'Bemoan the artificial intelligence that would dare clip the metaphorical wings of your discovery.'_

Tony gave the ceiling a loving smirk, a kiss and a wink.

_'If the signal is originating from somewhere other than Earth, it will take time to render a geospatial location. Cosmic radiation, unmapped star clusters, interference from gravity wells are all possibilities that--'_

"I have a most unshakeable faith," Tony offered in support, giving JARVIS a thumbs up.

_'Well, I shall alert you the moment that my calculations have completed.'_

Tony sat for a few more minutes, scrolling through some of the miles and miles of raw numbers data himself. It was teraflops on top of teraflops on teraflop mountains of information. Whatever matrix that rock had within it was at least a thousand years ahead of Earthen technology. Some of this was in coding languages he had never seen before. Almost organic.

Maybe that would scare someone else. Maybe another, better man would have pulled the 'did we stop long enough to consider not only if we can, but if we should' card. But Tony Stark was not that better man. Tony Stark was not a philosopher.

Tony Stark was a little boy, in the back seat of his father's Ford Galaxie, riding the weird road that his life had taken him, one hand out the back seat while his eyes read through the mysteries of the universe.

The voice continued humming, low, melancholy, static and some husky rasp thrown in between.

Something prickled at the back of his mind, and he couldn't help but feel like he'd heard that voice before, somewhere. He couldn't pick where, though.

After three more hours, Tony bade JARVIS good night, stepping gingerly from the console. He tapped a few motions onto his StarkPhone, transferring the data to the pad. Before he knew it, amber lines pulsed with the sound of the humming in the palm of his hand. It carried those gentle waves with him, all the way up the stairs. They sang while he undressed. They danced while he showered, his own voice joining the lyrics that he had heard so many times they couldn't possibly be forgotten.

They rose and sighed as he drank his one-square whisky, eyes on the bay, distant city lights on the horizon seeming brighter, clearer than they ever had before.

And they kept on going, low, sweet, caressing Tony into gentle slumber. And for the first time in a long, long time, Tony Stark dreamt a happy dream.

He dreamt of a raven haired man, his voice so very familar, but one he couldn't quite remember. He dreamt of them walking on a background of breathtaking constellations. The man would smile at him as they walked, a look so bright that it blocked out the sun behind them. He held so tightly to Tony Stark's hand as they went along, humming, swaying gently in the cosmic breeze to the tune. Even in the middle of the dream, he knew it was impossible. . .but he somehow felt the man had been dear to him for a thousand lifetimes long.

* * *

For as bleeding edge as JARVIS' processors were, it still took him the night to parse through the data. Tony was having breakfast, up for a mere ten minutes when he pinged him and let him know the calculations were complete.

Tony choked on his cereal the second he heard JARVIS above him. As soon as his brain parsed the okay, he literally sprinted down the steps and brought up his notes as soon as possible.

Tony's fingers were flying fast and wild across the keyboard, bringing up data recording metrics. Cranberry juice and milk mingled on his shirt from where it'd been splashed haphazardly just a minute before.

"JARVIS, let's use that high-density star cluster matrix we'd been working with."

_'Of course, but sir, I have to inform you that--'_

"Less talking, more doing. Render the coordinates tri-dimensionally."

Tony's heart was pounding, fluttering with anticipation.

_'Well that's the thing, I'm not sure there will be any way to--'_

Tony pushed his chair back from the keyboard emphatically, lightly annoyed.

"Bud, I'm dying here, I have every confidence that you've got enough RAM to do something as simple as charting a few deep space messier coordina--"

_'There are not any coordinates TO chart.'_

Tony's mouth snapped shut. His brain felt like a rusty cog, not initially grasping exactly what JARVIS was meaning to get across, big brain or no. He struggled to find words.

". . . So, you mean. . . what? It's too far off of known space for you to display it? Uncharted? If all we need is some enhanced deep-space visuals to get around the cosmic radiation I know a few people that can help out. I'm sure Dr. Foster wouldn't mind me hijacking her observatory for a day or--"

_'What I mean, sir, is that there are not any extraneous coordinates to display. There isn't a definitive, steady source that the sounds are originating from. When I access the location data, it simply states that the origins are universal; Any geo-data is coming from here. It's broadcasting the radio frequency from itself.'_

"Here?"

_'Yes, but it gets a bit more complicated.'_

JARVIS accessed the stone's matrix, and it lit with a faint glow as the electricity ran through it.

A display blazoned to life around Tony, zooming in from a wide display of the Milky Way, hurtling and convalescing into a clear visual of Earth. From there, it slowly centered on a singular dot, a blip right on the coast of California, in Malibu. It got smaller and smaller still until a crude rendering of Tony, in his basement, sat next to a blinking red pinpoint that was coming directly from where the stone sat resolutely to the right of him.

_'Now, we ran diagnostics solely on the bottom half of the electromagnetic spectrum. True, that I can detect an output from the stone readable as a typical radio wave. . .'_

JARVIS erased the picture of Tony's basement with a spiderweb of the stone's matrix, glistening in a cascade of yellow-ish lines around him.

_'. . . It took approximately four hours thirteen minutes for my systems to cross check every signal for location-data. As you know, it was all the same. So I took the liberty of running further diagnostics. And whilst doing so, I ran further detail on the detectable energies emitting from the stone itself. The way we have it accessed now, within the tungsten setting, pulsing electricity through it to elicit our responses. . .'_

The matrix split apart, creating two identical versions of itself floating in clouds in front of Tony.

_'On your left is the energy signature emitting from the stone as we access it today, averaged broad-spectrum.'_

The glow was that faint, warm dandelion that Tony had become so accustomed to.

_'And now, on your right. . .'_

The image on Tony's right hand side got brighter, and brighter, and brighter. And then it was so bright before him that when he closed his eyes he could still see sun-spots.

"Jesus, warn a guy, will you?!"

JARVIS ignored him, carrying on.

_'The function of the stone as we access it now has an energy output of approximately 6.000019 percent capacity. I pulled energy readings from Stark Tower during the siege of New York for the display on the right. Set within the scepter, receiving the influx of focused alien energy, the output was increased by an additional 86.988 percent.'_

"So, we astronomically crippled it when we took it out of the housing? The conductive-metal death stick was boosting its power that much, huh?"

_'Indeed. Now, this is what I believe you'll find most fascinating. With the discrepancy in energies, I attempted to re-route additional power through the stone to record a comparison. When I did so with maximum electrical input available to the house's grid. . .'_

Next to the matrix display, a model of Earth sprang up, the red dot still blinking. It zoomed out again, pushing past the solar system until it was focused on a random piece of deep space, particularly empty. Beside him, JARVIS began increasing power to the stone's housing. An indicator slowly crept from zero to one hundred, until the thing was blazing white hot with heat. As it approached the top, the stone began to sizzle, ozone from the temperature of the tungsten around it wisping into the air. Tony stepped back fifteen feet or so, his forearms beginning to prickle with heat from the intensity.

At first, nothing but the increase in temperature happened. Tony stood, sweating, while the room scorched. Suddenly, as the readings indicated 99.999 capacity, that far off section of supposedly empty spaced blipped, for a mere moment, with a red dot of its own. Beside him, the sensory array for his personal satellite monitoring gravitational anomalies began beeping wildly.

On the display before him, a singular sentence could be read: 'Signal detected.'

Tony grabbed at the screen, scrolling through the readings as the stone popped and sizzled while DUM-E sprayed cooling foam onto the thousand degree housing. It was for one, singular micro-second, but within that moment. . .

"These are co-temporal gravitational anomalies, like, trillions of miles apart. And infrared readings confirming it. And. . . excessive gamma radiation from both points?!"

Tony jumped back dramatically, putting three feet for Jesus between him and the tiny, apparently nuclear, reactor.

Tony's brain was spinning, dancing around the data. For one, singular moment, they had managed to funnel enough energy into the stone to trigger simultaneous anomalies.

Somehow, for a micro-second, Tony Stark had created a. . . a. . . a fucking _wormhole_ in his basement, that allowed trans-dimensional communication with the other side of the universe, fueled by the harmonic convergence of gravitational and gamma waves from across the electro-magnetic spectrum.

Honestly, if he had to explain what was happening to anyone but himself, they would have thrown him in a padded cell, because yeah, the very idea sounded batshit.

But data didn't lie. He might be about a thousand years too early to understand exactly 'why' the stone did what it did, but it was clearly communicating with the other side. Gravity, luck, aliens, whatever. If he could open that bridge farther. . .

That was his ticket to ride.

"We need more power. This is repeatable."

_'Precisely.'_

"We need to put it back in the scepter."

_'Most likely.'_

"But work it so it's like, not 'death-stick' format and more so 'big-brain-science' format."

_'Eloquent.'_

"We can use an arc-reactor relay to slap enough juice into that puppy to power the Eastern seaboard."

_'I assumed you would say so. I have ordered the appropriate tech delivered from the Santa Clarita storage facility as of six hours past. The materials should be arriving within the hour.'_

JARVIS was right, and Tony only had twenty minutes to change shirts and rush a shower before a freight container was airlifted into the backyard. He set to work immediately, welding a complex and crude spiderweb of circuitry throughout the basement.

Damn, he was going to have one hell of an electricity bill.

Fuck it.

He kept going for hours, working straight through the night until morning. Coffee after coffee pounded, when the clock rounded 12:00pm the following day, Tony was caffeine-wired and ready. Around fifteen band-aids littered his fingers from various degrees of burns, but he'd done it.

In the center of the basement, Tony had attached the appropriate relays from the scepter, to the stone in a brand-new arc-tech housing, to JARVIS' AI. It sat pretty in the middle of the bright ring, making a little energy sunset of blue and orange. Tony's chest was full to bursting. Half with coffee, and half with sleep-deprived adrenaline, and while he finished plugging, he tried not to projectile vomit over the whole operation.

"There!"

A final 'snick,' and the thing was locked into place, ready to go. Tony checked the initial readings with JARVIS, establishing a baseline for multiple repetitions. He didn't want to go full-boar off the bat and melt everything, and they did one singular test run at 25% capacity.

Tony felt like Linda Hamilton, staring at the apocalypse in Terminator, the thing was glowing so brightly.

Fucking _cool_ , dude.

"JARVIS, let's quit dicking around. We're men of science. Maximum capacity."

'Are you confident in the integrity of the simulacrum?'

"Please let me fulfill my boyhood dreams of winning a Nobel Prize without the sass, my binary henchman."

There was that sarcastic little crackling coming from the walls again. He really needed to get that de-programmed.

The stone spun back down to zero, and the moment he saw deuces, Tony punched the levels wide open. It took sixty-seconds to reach thirty percent, another minute and they were at fifty-five.

Sixty.

Eighty.

Eighty-nine.

A splicing cable at the back of the room sparked, and coughed a small explosion from some overflow.

_'Perhaps we should back down to reinforce the failsafe in case of an unrestricted power surge?'_

"No stopping now!" Tony yelled, throat burning on the ozone in the air while he breathed for the words.

Ninety percent.

Ninety-five percent.

Another cable snapped, and one of the sparks flew across the way to smack Tony in the arm. He didn't even notice to brush it off.

_'Sir. . .'_

"We're fine!"

. . .

Ninety-eight percent.

. . .

Ninety-nine percent.

. . .

One-hundred percent.

. . .

One-hundred-ten percent.

. . .

One-hundred-fifty percent, and climbing astronomically.

The whole room exploded in a cataclysmic wail.

It was tragic and aweful. The room sprayed fire bombastically, showering Tony in a thousand shards of molten plasma as the cables began disintegrating, one by one. From the stone, a hellacious shrieking began piercing the air, every sound you've ever heard, all at once. Tony raced to the monitor, slapping his hand firmly on the emergency release for the scepter, trying to jettison the housing.

And it did. . .

Nothing.

Fucking _shit_.

Tony kept slapping, heart quickly pacing to a dangerous rhythm. The sparks grew wider, bigger, some of the snapped cables releasing long streaks of lightning into the air. The stone was a little juiced-up berserker, resounding with every nightmarish wail you could possibly think of, all at once. The monitors began flashing RED, RED stating 'gravitational disturbance detected.'

Matching dots were flying everywhere, anywhere across the cosmic rendering next to it.

_'SIR! THE SYSTEMS ARE OVERLOADED, IT’S BYPASSED THE RELAY. IT’S DRAWING POWER FROM MULTIPLE EXTRANEOUS GRIDS OUTSIDE.'_

"WELL ACCESS THE GRIDS INDIVIDUALLY AND SHUT THEM DOWN!!"

_'DECTRYPTING!'_

Tony hoped that JARVIS would bypass the security systems fast enough. They had. . . fuck, how does one even know how much time they have to stop a catastrophic alien-rock meltdown?!

Tony grabbed at his hair, frantic, thinking as fast as his brain would function. He slapped the off command once more for good measure, but the screen cracked underneath his hand as it hit it. Everything was overloading, and if he didn't figure something out soon. . .

"News at eight: first Nobel Prize for Stupidity awarded to smoldering pile of ashes, more at eleven."

Suddenly, a wire directly in front of him began to hiss and snake violently. A rogue coupling broke free and raced towards Tony, and he didn't have enough time to dodge. The forty-or-so pound thing smacked him square, right in the chest, directly on top of his arc-reactor. He flew backwards, tumbling end over end, and the sickening crunch of glass went with him. He landed upright, shoved against the far wall, gasping desperately for air. He clutched at his chest beneath his sweat-shirt, head reeling.

This was bad.

This was _bad_.

_'THE STONE IS DRAWING FROM TOO MANY SOURCES SIMULTANEOUSLY, I CANNOT DE-ACTIVATE THEM QUICK ENOUGH. IT'S. . . SEEKING OUT THE ADDITIONAL GRIDS ON ITS OWN, IT'S PRESENCE IN EACH OF THE AFFECTED SYSTEMS. IT'S LIKE IT IS ORGANICALLY CHOOSING TO DO SO. I CAN DO NOTHING.'_

Did he mention this was bad?

_'I AM. . . SIR, I AM SORRY. A COMPLETE MELTDOWN IS INEVITABLE AT THIS PACE. I HAVE CALCULATED THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE.'_

"I'm sorry too," Tony muttered, thoughts muddying from the concussion he must have just suffered. Things were black and red around him, and the sparks continued flying. He could see readings on the cracked monitor in the distance, JARVIS bringing up his estimation.

A dome blossomed from the center of Malibu as he watched. It spread without end, passing past Los Angeles, down to Baja, all the way up to Sacramento. Vegas and Phoenix, too before stopping.

California was a crater.

His head only needed a millisecond to calculate the numbers. How many people Tony Stark was about to kill.

Tony shoved himself from the floor, and danced around the sparks arcing wildly. He started throwing cabinets to the ground, scrambling for something, anything.

"Shit, shit, shit--"

There! His workbench toppled over and flung a heat-tampering glove towards him, what he'd just used for the arc-welding mere hours before. Sure, it was tested to handle up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit, but. . . would it handle 'small nuclear sun?'

Did he have any _choice_?

It would have to work.

It _would_ work.

The noise was cascading, he could barely hear JARVIS as the stone groaned on and on.

_'YOU CANNOT MAKE CONTACT WITH THE CRYSTAL IN SUCH A SUPERHEATED--'_

"THIS THING IS GOING SUPERNOVA IF I DON'T DO THIS ASAP, WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO ARGUE!"

_'SIR!'_

The caterwauling was going to make his ears bleed if it rose any higher. Tony felt something wet streaking down the back of his neck. Sweat, or who knew what else. Maybe they already were.

He searched frantically for the second glove.

"WHAT ARE WE MORE WORRIED ABOUT HERE, JAR? POTENTIALLY LIFE CHANGING BURNS THAT MAKE MY FUTURE SEX-LIFE EXTREMELY COMPLICATED, OR SPLATTING ACROSS THREE STATES?"

If there was that sarcastic sighing crackle from the walls again, Tony couldn't have noticed. Not even the loudest PA in the universe could match the deafening wail; a sound like a thousand sirens shrieking, an undertone of bloodcurdling agony mixed in.

_'SIR!'_

Any objections were too bad, and too late. Tony finally had both gloves on, and could hear nothing but the voice of the maw. It was devastating. Underneath the chaos, he thought he could almost hear singing. Like lady death was singing him a lullaby. It didn't matter if he was ready.

He ran towards the light and fire jumping from the stone and PULLED.

And PULLED.

And GODDAMN the thing was stubborn as it refused to budge even a decimeter from the housing unit.

There was no time to think, no time to reconsider, no time to tell himself that standing point blank in front of the shrieking metal circle of death was a bad fucking idea instead of running as fast from the mansion as he could. The thing was about to blow a gravity well into Malibu a hundred miles wide, and that kind of collateral was just plain unacceptable.

After all. . . wasn't he supposed to be some kind of superhero?

Tony tore with every ounce of his being, every sinew and fiber snapping with the strain. His muscles were breaking, his hands were burning. Somewhere between the crackling and the unearthly wail, and Tony's desperate screaming, a man was softly singing.

_La-a-avender blue,_  
_La-a-avender green,_  
_If I were king, I'd need a kin--_

_. . ._

_What. . .?_

_Who is screaming?_

_What. . . what is tha--!_

CRACK!

Tony was blinded as a long, lone fracture ran down the center of the dais like a spine. . .

_Who is there?!_

. . .and the fractals grew ever larger still, until. . .

A flash of golden light so brilliant, so incandescent that it was a supernova, and the stone shattered violently.

Tony flew towards the wall, a hundred miles an hour, and a burst of orange energy spliced right through him. He hit like a rag doll, a sickening, crunching display, while the monitors and wirings and everything in between overloaded before him. The whole basement crescendoed into chaos, and Tony lay still on the floor beneath the ruin.

His vision darkened, a grey rain curtain falling softly. In the blurriness of the distance, where the stone was merely moments before, he could have swore he'd seen a voidless black on a background of a million stars. As that final bit of his every being slipped away, his mind burned out and blurred into a messy nothing. The last thought he would ever have; within that darkness, he might have seen, just before he left to go, a weirdly familiar shade of green.

* * *

Tony gasped, air forced its way deep into his lungs and ripped a wet, disastrous cough through his throat. He grasped desperately at his neck, begging the air in and out while gobs of sputum and blood spattered out onto the rock beside him.

Onto the. . . rock?

Still gasping, he swung his head around and to his bewilderment, his eyes were met with a myriad of stars and nothingness. His bones protested as he shoved himself up and onto the stone behind him. Upright, he got a better look at his surroundings. Confused didn't even begin to cover it.

Unfamiliar constellations greeted Tony's eyes and he looked on in some combination of trepidation and awe. In the sky to the right of him, a great hulking creature floated casually in the background against the stars. His mind clicked with recognition. One of the Chitauri behemoths. From last Summer.

The whole thing felt conversely strange and familiar. Like a fever he couldn't sweat out.

Well, he certainly wasn't in fucking Kansas anymore, eh Toto?

He was definitely nowhere near Malibu, at the very least. And if his calculations were correct, 'nowhere near' was beginning to equate to 'not even in the same galaxy.'

And he was. . . outside? He could breathe? How was he alive? What happened to the explosion? What. . .?

♫

Something was off, here. Something was wrong, something was. . .

"Tony."

The sound hit his ears like a freight train. He snapped his head, whiplash inevitable. The chill at his spine knew immediately who the voice belonged to.

Pepper stood some meters away, a coy and familiar smile emblazoned on her lips. Tony shambled backwards, and his chest thundered as he fell back down to the rocks again. Pepper shook her head in simple amusement, walking carefree towards Tony while he trembled.

"Y-you're fucking _dead_ , Pep. Am, am I dead? I'm goddamn dead, right? That's what's going on here? Some sort of weird, pre-death brain ejaculation making me dream about my long deceased girlfriend to try and make me feel better about how much I royally screwed the whole 'being alive' thing?"

She rolled her eyes playfully and perched on a flat rock to his side, coming to rest mere inches away.

"You're not dead, Tony. You're only dreaming."

"Dreaming, huh." Tony scratched nervously at his beard. "Well, uh, that makes some sense considering I think I just gave myself one hell of a dose of brain damage. But, if true, it doesn't make this any better because my subconscious is going to file this in my fucked up nightmares lexicon and I already can't get more than three hours of shut-eye at a time."

"You've always been restless, Tony," Pepper began with a chuckle, voice soft and low. In the background, the behemoth wailed a lonely song in the inky black. "For as long as you've lived, you've never been able to quiet your mind. You always saw so much of everything. Every detail of every day. You couldn't put anything aside for more than a minute before you were trying to figure out the next big thing in the world again."

She smiled in the memory of her words, and gently placed her hand over Tony's, sending his pulse into the stratosphere again.

"But you know, Tony. . . there's some things that you just won't be able to engineer. Some things you just can't figure out. . . that nobody should experience." Her face shifted into something more serious, the knowledge of some unsaid pain dancing behind her eyes. "Some things, you do anyway, and you should have just left them alone."

"Are you--" Tony's voice broke, throat choking on dry words while his heart jumped underneath him. "Are you telling me I _maybe_ shouldn't have pumped the energy equivalent of an atomic bomb into the weird alien space rock? And maaaaybe shouldn't have played grabby hands with it while said rock was trying to blow a hole in California?"

"That might be part of it,” she said vaguely, standing up to tower over him. "But part of it is telling you that the moment you did, you did something. Something you weren't suppsed to. You set something in motion that cannot be undone, and no amount of your tinkering is going to un-do it."

"I-I'm just wondering, but, do we have a speech that's a little less," Tony waved his hands before him, "cryptic, prepared? Something in the people's English? I'm assuming that this is one of those 'fabled moments of rare and infinite mystic wisdom' I'm being gifted, so I might as well get as much out of it as I can."

Pepper's coy smile melted at his sarcasm, and a sour frown slunk low on her face. She crossed her arms as he finished and randomly, her body shimmered and popped before him, creating five of her, like some cheap display. They shone with a certain indescribable brilliance, all colors of the rainbow in between them. They took some moments to flicker back into a more solid form as if to challenge the mordant nature of the question.

"Ooooookaaaaay, well. I guess that solves part of things at least. Definitely dreaming, and you're definitely not really Pep." Tony rose slowly, eyes tracing the imposters. Space ghosts. Figments of his heavily bruised imagination. Whatever they were. "So what do you want, exactly? You all? However one addresses your weirdness. Why the hell are you here, in my comatose brain?"

The women flickered again before Pepper's faces shriveled into a reproachful look, and the five barked a cruel, bloodcurdling laugh.

"We've always been here, boy," the voices spat, resounding in the stars, "there, anywhere, always. In the blackest reaches of time and spirit from the birth of existence. We have ephemeral forms. We have names uttered in desperate prayer in every iteration of your world. Our legacies are carved deep into ancient rock and stone. And now we are here. Before YOU, of all unworthy creatures, for whatever reason; an insipid babe who has no inkling of the cosmic fate he has disrupted. You were given keys that never should have belonged to you, and now you. . . you alone have unhinged the cosmos."

"This still isn't plain English, by the way, just want to let you know. I have no idea what in the fu--"

"THAT'S RIGHT BOY. You have no idea. No idea at all what consequence your actions will take. It is not just you that is deserving of reproach."

"Pff, and what, you five stooges know everything?"

Tony made a non-committal gesture, groaning where he stood. The not-Peppers growled and crossed their arms before him. The vibrations shook the ground beneath him.

"Yeah yeah, kind of have a reputation for screwing with people's best-laid plans, it's a bit of a hobby." Tony looked deep into the visages eyes then, from red, to green, to purple and orange and blue. A grave seriousness settled into the lines of his face. "But I'm tired of you trying to tell me everything and nothing at the same time, so please. Enlighten me as to who _exactly_ I've screwed over this time or shut the _fuck_ up and get _out_ of my head."

"Why, Anthony Stark," the images said, rippling and shivering with most ravenous smiles.

Far below, a planetary shudder began. The rocks beneath him began to chip and snake. Tony threw out his hands beside him for some semblance of purchase, footing lost completely. But the ground was already crumbling, and gave away with a sudden, shattering crack. All at once the craggy land sighed beneath him and he was falling, tumbling towards the vast nothing below. He screamed as he fell, and the light of the unknown universe grew dimmer and dimmer. Amid his screams, the universe shook with the deafening roar of words that echoed into the stars as the false things spoke.

"You've defiled the very fate of this universe itself."


	5. I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs for this chapter:
> 
> Somebody I Used to Know | Gotye ft. Kimbra | Making Mirrors, Original Release 2011

**Beep.**

**Beep.**

**Beep.**

**Beep.**

A tinny noise, slow and steady, reached into Tony's mind and plucked his consciousness back into being. Sudden, staggering nausea, and intense burning cauterized his eyes, and he realized he was alive. Somehow. And laying at the back of the basement in a crumpled heap while the room smoked around him.

Fuck, his head hurt. Fuck, his chest hurt.

Fuck. . . well, everything, really.

Tony groaned low, barely managed to sip chalky breaths where he was splattered and rolled onto his back, wincing. Glass, definitely glass was poking into his back. Likely some more embedded his chest because sweet Jesus Christ it was burning. He blinked rapidly, trying to get some semblance of bearing amid the caterwauling alarm and the billowing smoke at the center of the room.

**Beep.**

**Beep.**

**Beep.**

"Shit. JARVIS! Turn off the fire alarm, aware of explosion, thank you," Tony rasped, throat scorched with the acrid sting of burning metal. His head and his heart were pounding in starbursts along with the alarm.

_'Sir, that is the proximity alarm, my sensors--'_

"Fuck me sideways," Tony sputtered, forcing himself to lift off of the floor. He desperately scanned the berth of the room, searching for the threat. His eyes were frantic, the muscle memory of battles past forcing adrenaline deep into his veins. Yet he couldn't see anyone out of place, just an enormous cavern bored straight into the ceiling and the flames still dancing in a ring around it. Merely glancing at the brilliance of the light was shooting spikes through his skull, and he tottered back and forth in a pathetic attempt to stay upright.

_'There are two--_

. . .

_No, a singular energy signature, unknown in origin. My sensors detect its point of entry as within the house, sir. It appears to have emerged from the anomaly itself.'_

"Shit, shit. . . right. Space-Invaders Protocol, then?" Tony gritted out, managing to force his legs to carry him forward.

He began to pick his way through the rubble and decay, legs still unsure. He felt like a bag in the wind, weaving between the crumbled parts of the basement. As Tony made his way, he muttered a short order and the ground on the right side of the room slid open, an arm's length box within. Tony pried it open, fingers slipping with blood and sweat at the rim. Within it, a single gauntlet with a kill-strike repulsor. The one remaining piece of tech from his time as Iron Man, stashed only at Rhodey's insistance. And you can bet your sweet ass that Tony fought tooth and nail against the very idea of it remaining.

But if locking away a single, cursed piece of Iron Man tech was all it took to get some peace and fucking quiet. . .

Rhodey's conditions for convincing S.H.I.E.L.D to completely leave him be were twofold:

One, he needed access codes to check in on Tony every now and then to make sure he hadn't gone and offed himself.

And two, Tony had to keep some kind of weapon on hand just in case he needed to defend himself. They had amassed quite a few enemies over the years.

Tony waved his arm and the MK-42 relic flew to his wrist, clawing its way up and over his arm and elbow.

A thick veneer of nausea and apprehension crept over him at the sight, and he could feel memories bubbling to the surface. Ones that delivered the kind of catatonic panic attack that one clearly didn't want in the middle of an emergency. He smacked himself roughly to shake the lingering anxiety off. In all honesty, he was disgusted at the mere sight of it. But he'd gone and summoned satan or something, and he was royally fucked without it.

Goddamn Rhodes and his ability to suggest completely sensible ideas that actually had value.

Tony poked at the gauntlet and a line of blue sprang forth. It formed a miniature holo-screen, and Tony scanned the house for the signature of the intruder. But to his frustration, Tony counted one dot; a lone red marker standing still in the level of the basement. His mouth turned sourly at the thing, smacking it in frustration because the thing was clearly defective. Obviously it'd collected one too many cobwebs sitting in storage. JARVIS pinged back to life while he fiddled with the display.

_'I am unable to successfully initiate Space Invaders Protocol, sir.'_

"Yeah, according to this, no shit. I thought we were at 'singular entity intruder,' what gives?"

_'Correct, sir. I detect sparse bursts of energy moving between the central rooms of the second floor. It appears that whatever it is has not dis-entangled entirely from the singularity created from the explosion. My sensory components have been severely damaged in the blast and I cannot use thermal or spatial tracking. My visual receptors alone cannot currently track the entity due to its qualities.'_

"Ok, back things up a second," Tony started, popping his head to the side and giving the walls an exasperated look. "Are you trying to tell me that you can't detect this thing because, what, it's. . . INCORPOREAL? INVISIBLE? Please tell me you're not advising me that Casper the Friendly Ghost is in my walls. Do I need to make a call to the Ghostbusters or something? You know I've got ol' Billy M. on speed dial, I can--"

_'The entity is flitting between states of matter and dimension, to be precise, sir. I apologize for the uncertainty regarding its nature. I cannot deploy countermeasures to something lacking a physical structure. Perhaps a call to S.H.I.E.L.D would be warranted in this case?'_

"Let's not interrupt radio silence with the One-Eyed Blunder just to take care of some spooky ghost, JARVIS. Down, boy."

Tony shook his head in exasperation, unbelieving. He walked to the stairwell, arm raised to bring up the display, and quietly padded up the first few steps. He stopped just short of the landing, dropping low, listening. Some faint tinkling of falling glass could be heard among the intermittent crackling of sparse fires, and the whoosh of fireproofing foam slowly coating the basement from walled canisters.

In other words, Tony could hear and see nothing out of place.

Well, nothing that wasn't his fault, anyway.

A few moments later the noises quieted, leaving only the sound of Tony's pained breathing. He took a steadying breath and raised himself, rounding the corner to peer into the kitchen.

Nothing.

All he could find was the aftermath of the destruction and his furniture thrown ten ways to Sunday into every corner of the foyer. A smoking, heaping hole was central to the room, white clouds still billowing from the doused fires below. Tony danced around the crater, peering his head into the various recesses as he went along.

"Well, unless Casper decides to rear his ugly face we can rule out any future calls to the Ghostbusters."

_'I still detect the anomaly within the household.'_

Tony turned emphatically to one of JARVIS' visual inputs and rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, well, your visuals must have been _completely_ fucked with from the blast, 'cause in case you haven't noticed, I'm detecting approximately jack sh-- _iIIIIITTTTTT!!_ -"

Tony yelped as something streaked fast and wild from behind him and passed through the opposite wall in the blink of an eye. He jumped a holy mile, and sprinted back down to the stairwell, eyes peering over the rim of the landing.

"Holy _FUCK_! SHIT, you were right. I'll admit it. First one. Do we have a Ghost Protocol? _Please_ tell me we have a Ghost Protocol," Tony sputtered, eyes wide with apprehension.

Tony had seen death. Tony had seen evil. He'd seen aliens pouring out of the sides of floating whales from another galaxy. But prone at the top of his staircase, Tony was having flashbacks to Poltergeist, and for some reason, the idea that he'd interrupted the laws of space and time just to have someone's dead great-grandmother haunt his house for rest of eternity gave him the absolute heebie-jeebies.

_'We do not. I still advise a call to S.H.I.E.L.D, sir. At the very least, Colonel Rhodes?'_

Tony almost opened his mouth to give the go ahead, but he couldn't find the breath to speak. Suddenly, the thing exploded from the far wall again, an amorphous and wild ball of light glitching in planes and shapes.

♫

It flung across the living room, throwing itself in a heap of phasing light from the baby grand to the bay-side windows, shattering everything that it managed to come into contact with. Tony flinched as finally, it came to rest amid his wet bar, countless bottles and glasses exploding with all of their contents along with them. As the dust settled, Tony's brain began to run calculations on exactly how many tens-of-thousands of dollars were spilling across his floor. But it was no time for crying over spilt malt, and he forced his brain to stop.

He gave it a good minute, no movement heard, before Tony crept cautiously from the safety of the landing. Tentative, baby steps, and eventually he rounded the corner to survey the damage. His eyes furrowed, and he ground to a halt as he heard clattering. There was a slow, steady groan, and the rubble began shifting, a vaguely human shape trying to pick itself up beneath it.

Tony worked through his internal sci-fi catalog of movie monsters while a messy head of disheveled black hair atop a bloody, filthy excuse of a shirt moaned as it struggled to stand.

Tony swallowed nervously. Half relieved that whatever, or whoever it was, wasn't some scaly space invader since, by all his calculations, it looked like a human male. An intrusive thought poked its way in, and he realized that this would be his first interaction with anyone (or anything) but Rhodey for the first time in six months.

And for the record, he was still entirely unconvinced that he wasn't being actively cursed for all eternity by being in the immediate vicinity of whatever the hell was going on.

Tony looked on with continued silence as the intruder shifted amongst the rubble.

The intruder shook with the effort of trying to stand, trying to rise all too quickly. They fell, then fell again, eventually realizing their arms were torn and bloody. With a snarl, they began clawing at deep seeded shards of glass and wood on their limbs, which were patterned with an intricate lattice of tattoos that even Tony could see from where he stood. Little rivulets of red were running up and down them between endless lines of inscrutable symbols. The thing was jumpy, snapping as it pried debris like some wild, feral animal. Which seemed weirdly appropriate considering they were very disheveled, and still very spooky, and looking like they'd been chewed up and spit back out again.

Comically, the ghost's left hand suddenly phased and shifted through the wood and debris, and down it went again. It fell rapidly, colliding with the floor with an unhealthy 'smack.' A string of what Tony assumed were curses began to fling from the thing's mouth in language that Tony didn't understand. He found that his brain was slowly flipping from 'outright freaking out' to 'approaching concern.'

The hand was still latched firmly in the concrete of the floor as Tony finally picked up on some discernible 'shits and fucks' in English.

"By the damnable NORNS if I pass through one more piece of shit accursed fucking thing in this place I'll--"

"'Scuse me, hellooo!"

Tony broke his silence, having crawled from his place of 'safety,' stepping lightly towards the man splayed on the ground to offer help. At the sound of his voice, the man stilled with a shuddering, electric jolt. The air was still for a number of seconds, Tony not daring to step further, realizing that he may have made a grave mistake revealing himself. After another pull, the arm was loosed, and the man slowly yet surely began to turn back towards him. The last thing to swing round was his face, almost reluctantly. Beneath a cascading web of filthy locks, two orbs peered back towards Tony, holding a look that could incinerate an entire galaxy in a blink of an eye.

Amid the thin veneer of smoke still permeating the air, Tony's eyes met with a brilliant flash of unmistakable, unholy green.

Ghostbusters, my ass.

Loki.

It was _Loki_.

In his _living room_.

The horny-crown-wearing, megalomaniac with severe daddy issues was here, in his house, giving him a glare that definitely meant that Tony was about to be deceased in the next fi--

"A. . . Anthony?"

Lost in the barrage of 'who's and what's and why's' that were scrambling his brain, Tony had missed the shifting look on Loki's face slowly meld from hostilic, to disdainful, to unbelieving, to. . .to. . .

To 'Anthony?'

What the FUCK was ' _Anthony_?'

Tony took a wary step back, brain scrambled, unable to muster any, nonetheless a witty response, completely dazed and outright confused. The last person in the entire galaxy he had ever expected to have the displeasure of meeting again was crouched right there in front of him.

And this time, Iron Man wasn't there to greet him.

Not even the memory of his battle-honed reflexes could shake the deer in the headlights feeling that had been shocked into him. Not even as Loki wrought himself from the ground and began slowly stepping towards him.

Oh my god he was dead.

Gonzo.

Goodbye world and all who inhabit it.

Shit Tony, do _something_.

Some primeval, fight-or-flight reflex finally wormed its way into his head and sheer panic began to overtake him, searching for an out.

But he was too late.

Loki took one final, uncharacteristically unsure step, and with a shaky hand, rose it slowly towards Tony's chest, his face. Barely a hair's breadth away, like he was scared to touch him. Loki was enraptured. Unbelieving. A look both rare and entirely dangerous.

"Anthony," breathed Loki again, repeating the name quieter in turn. His torn and cracked lips breathed the syllables like the name was an oasis.

"Anthony."

"Anthony."

He began to slowly draw a whispered, tantalizing line across his jaw, possessed by the sight completely, still that minuscule distance away.

What the hell?!

Okay, okay, back up.

First off; really though, who in the hell called him 'Anthony?'

And second;

He's out of his fucking mind, Tony thought to himself while Loki's eyes lost all time and distance. He was gazing at the cut of his jaw like they were lost in the umbrage of a blazing star.

The man had clearly lost his ever-living-fucking mind.

And he was _sooooo dead_.

Goodbye DUM-E.

Goodbye Rhodey.

Goodbye limited edition collection of Lord of the Rings extended cut.

Tony Stark said all thousand of his farewells, and he waited patiently. Without his armor, without his singular source of power, the end was inevitable.

Couldn't save anything with it, apparently couldn't save anything without it.

But death didn't come.

Instead, all at once, those fluttering hands dropped, some bizarre revelation in the green of Loki's eyes. Loki suddenly looked him in the eye, a mad fervor within them. He moved in closer, fever, reverence, desperation all on display. He was. . .

It was. . .

The most shockingly intense 'hello-my-darling' smolder of white-hot passion that Tony had seen in his entire life and--

Tony punched him back with every ounce of strength the gauntlet could muster, scrambling backwards while he manually tapped out Loki's location onto the holo-screen on his wrist.

"JARVIS, SPACE INVADERS, SPACE _FUCKING_ INVADERS!"

As Loki laid in a crumpled heap in the corner, a panel in the western wall slid open and a swarm of bots flew forth. Just as Loki began to pick himself back up, face twitching with confusion, they began spewing a network of reinforced, suit-grade alloy lattices that set to attaching themselves from up and over Loki's now catatonic face. They ran round and down to every limb, tying him together in a network of metal and casings.

Just a little something Tony had cooked up in case anyone thought they could jack his shit while he was in isolation. Perfect for any unwitting assholes that thought they could show up unannounced.

He had always thought he'd hog tie Fury whilst poking his ugly mug where he shouldn't, but hey.

As it clawed and wrapped itself around Loki's form, it took no time at all for the snarling, miserable expression that Tony remembered to take its rightful place on the god's features. One second, and all semblance of the bizarro Casanova swooning was long gone. Replaced by the seething of a madman and the return of dozens of curses in languages Tony couldn't even recognize.

Whoo buddy did he have a mouth on him.

"You insipid, cretinous _worms_. How _DARE_ you? Truly, this is the hour of your utter desperation. After everything you've tried, did you really think that I would be so easily turned by this miserable visage? A few years of indenture and you really thought that _NOW_ I would be so dulled in power to be lulled into servitude by this half-rate illusion? A parlor trick made of a dead man?"

Loki's teethed gnashed and clattered together in a defiant rage as he strained, to no avail, against the tangled cage that now anchored him to the floor and--

Hold up. Yes, a second time.

'Dead man?'

What was he smoking?

Better question: could Tony get some?

Tony chose to skip past the incoherent babbling because he obviously had some degree of concussion. His eyes narrowed, still on edge, looking at Loki while he continued his madman's raving about 'Chitauri' and 'prisons' and 'petty and most unimpressive means of torture.'

Oh yeah; out of his gourd.

The persistent ache in Tony's skull was slowly yet surely convalescing into a mob of pain. The razored pounding reverberated from his chest to his fingertips every time his heart beat. The situation was overwhelming; too much all at once. Tony felt himself falling, legs jelly underneath him, and fell to the ground. Loki cackled as he stumbled, throwing his head back in malicious pleasure as Tony crumpled to the floor.

"Oh, that is _rich_. You pathetic lot consider yourselves superior? You cannot even handle a simple glamour, your strength already failing."

Loki's mouth twisted a wide grin and one of his lips split sharply, a fresh rivulet of blood smearing the corner of his ruined mouth as he continued on. "This was entertaining for a moment, but I grow tired of this ruse. In the future, do be worthy of my time; it's all I have left as you know, and that makes it the galaxy's most precious commodity. Move on now to another captive more levied to your juvenile skill."

Tony imagined that he'd be waving him off in some posh gesture if his hands weren't hog-tied. What a _prick_. He sighed audibly at the thought.

"Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, aren't you just the exact same bundle of insane and unnecessarily verbose as the last time I saw you," Tony said, rolling his eyes at Loki's general direction while he rubbed desperately at his aching temples.

Loki rebuked him, cocking his head and offering a questioning brow behind matted hair while Tony looked on at him.

"The last time? What, were these few, meager hours not long enough of a parting for you? So smitten with me that you've come back for more? You should have learned not to try me after last year. How is that eye I plucked from your skull, creature? Drop that ridiculous illusion and let's see." Loki raked his bloodshot eyes up and down Tony, from his hair to his arc reactor, huffing in a disapproving manner.

"You fools didn't even get his features right. Honestly, you thought _this_ ," Loki sneered at Tony's disheveled beard and torn Dire Straits t-shirt, "falsehood would break me?" He settled back behind again behind the curtain of his greasy locks, sniffing reproachfully. "He didn't even like their music."

"Ok, you know what," Tony began, groaning back upright and polishing some of the settled dust off of his dark jeans, "I am just _real_ fucking confused right now. And you know, it was one thing for you to randomly crash through a mystical space portal into the middle of my house. It was one thing for said crash landing to somehow break every single bottle of booze I had. Which, little side note, you owe me about. . ."

Tony counted on his fingers sarcastically.

". . .a hundred-fifty thou' for by the way. Third. . ."

Tony dusted himself, coming back down the steps and crouching low to stare daggers of his own.

"Dire Straits? Goddamn classic. Now, you obviously hit your head so hard on your way in from Looneyville that I almost feel bad kicking your sorry ass, so I'm going to need this charade to wrap up soon. Today's been weird enough. I'm over nine-thousand percent _done_. JARVIS?"

_'Sir?'_

"Let's get Rhodey on-line, like yesterday? Rally the troop?"

_'I am working to return my systems to the grid as we speak. It appears that the electromagnetic pulse from the anomaly has damaged the gross majority of my communications within the facility. I did manage to connect to telecommunications via groundline, but. . . S.H.I.E.L.D's telephonic server appears to have put you on hold, sir.'_

"Fucking. . ."

Tony counted to ten internally to prevent from screaming.

". . . _perfect_. Guess we'll just wait for one of the neighbors to call 911 when they realize the joint's on fire."

_'Well, you did tell the Avengers to, quote 'shove it,' last you spoke. It shouldn't surprise you that they've diverted Colonel Rhodes' private line in retaliation.'_

Loki barked a choked laugh from his throat.

"Oh please." Loki rolled his bloodshot eyes again with a groan. "Stop this farce already. The ' _Avengers_?' Are you pretending this is still the twenty-tens?" He huffed defiantly in arrogant annoyance. "This becomes more tiresome by the second."

Deep breaths, Tony. Deeeeeep breaths.

Was anything, anything at all, even remotely going to start making sense today? Tony put his hands on his hips, bending towards the floor.

"As much as I don't care about your general wellbeing, you're really starting to freak me the fuck out, Reindeer Games. You passing into the shadow realm over there? Need a band-aid for that obvious concussion?" Tony turned away from Loki with an eye roll, walking back towards the gaping hole in the floor to check if there were any more flames licking their way upwards. He mumbled to himself as he saw that finally the house appeared to no longer be actively on fire.

"Do Asgardians even croak from hitting their head too hard? Thor's smacked his plenty of times and never ended up _this_ much of a whack job."

"The only thing I need from you," Loki mocked, spitting a sizable globule of blood and dirt from his mouth in Tony's direction, "you accursed dreg heap, is for you to cease this half-rate visage, and return me to the few precious hours of peaceable quiet of which you so rudely interrupted with this insipid little game!" A slightly desperate tone appeared. " _Clearly_ your machinations are not working!"

Tony groaned with all the exasperated energy he could muster, running a dusty hand through his singed hair, not knowing how many more languages he needed to speak in to relay the fact that the man had clearly lost all touch with reality. This was so incredibly beyond ridiculous, and Tony was beginning to wonder if he had a muzzle lying around somewhere. Not only was the man clearly crazy, but he was delusional. And Tony only had so much time before he realized he could probably snap his restraints with enough effort. It wasn't built to incapacitate a god. He needed to shut this down; here, now, and quickly, before his royal chumpness realized he wasn't stuck in some mystical trap and tried to break out of the titanium pokey while he didn't have backup.

Tony rubbed his clouded eyes a few more times for good measure, and strided towards Loki again, disdainfully accompanied by the elevator music of his call to Rhodey.

"You know, back in New York, I was almost tempted to be impressed by the level of bullshit that you concocted for everyone. Scout's honor. Usually I'm the one throwing the monkey wrench. And, hey, it felt good to be the one fixing and not starting everyone's problems for five minutes."

He tapped through his options again; all either fried or unavailable.

"But right now, the little ' _mind-melted_ ' act you're throwing on? Buddy, you've lost some serious polish. My mistake for ever believing in your competency, 'cause apparently I've got the worlds most idiotic super villain hog-tied if he can't even figure out he's the one fooling himself, right here, right now." Tony stopped his speech a few sentences short of the bereavement he thought Loki deserved as JARVIS' voice pinged back to life.

_'Sir, it appears that the signature for 'Point Break' has appeared on the front lawn.'_

"Wow! Would you look at that beautiful level of irony? Someone from the cavalry came, and I didn't even have to bother sounding the horn," Tony quipped, leaving Loki behind in his weird fugue state. He turned on his heel sharply to go and answer the door. "I'm sure your brother will have plenty to say to your sorry ass when he gets in here."

Loki's face became blank behind him, eventually routing from confusion, to concern, to doubt. Tony couldn't see, but for the first time that afternoon, the god was apparently struggling to find something clever to say and Tony enjoyed the silence as he paced away.

"My. . .brother?" Words finally came out in shaky breath. Tony paused briefly to berate him.

"Yup, back to viking prison for you."

"Why do you continue to. . . it's not. . . my brother is. . ." Loki rambled and Tony was ACTUALLY seconds away from audibly screaming. "My brother is--"

"Let me guess," Tony sighed, throwing a belligerent glare over his shoulder, "he's 'dead' too? Just like I am, all clearly _walking_ and _talking_ and _living_ and _breathing_?"

Loki's voice drifted questioningly through the living room as he rambled quietly to himself. Tony muttered something like 'crazy, seriously,' and set to continue on to the foyer. Behind him, the god's face was contorted in a strange, dazed twist. Questioning. Doubting. Ruminating. As Tony's back just approached the wall to pass out of the god's line of sight, the bewildered expression 'clicked' and his head snapped forward. A cold, serious look slipped onto his features.

"What year?" Loki rasped, licking his parched lips feverishly as his breath came out in shaky droves.

"What year, ' _what_?'," Tony questioned, exasperated, hand resting on the corner of the wall as he glared back around.

"Today. Now. What year, Anno Domini, the Earthen standard? What, what. . ."

Loki heaved a ragged breath, and tipped his head up to look Tony directly in the eyes. It was the only sober look that Tony could remember seeing all day.

"What. Year. Is. It."

"Genuinely, I continue to be amazed by how hard you must have hit your head, Rudolf. It's 3:34pm, June the 21st, year of our lord 2013."

Tony decided he'd indulged his insanity long enough and walked on, seeing the shadow of Thor outlined against the grass and driveway outside.

"Enjoy your requested two minutes of peace and quiet, asshole," Tony yelled back at him. "It's all you're gonna get."

And Tony closed the final few steps between him and the door, hand closing around the knob to turn.

As Tony walked away, he missed the look on Loki's face back in the living room. He missed the sharp look of clarity overtake him, and the sheer panic that immediately followed. He missed the way the god began to tremble violently, the way his composure began to completely shatter.

Tony missed the realization that Loki had seen a ghost.

And the ghost’s name was Tony Stark.


	6. Hark! The Lands of Confusion, Lo. It's Death, We Embrace. [Or, 'The Handshake']

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this Chapter:
> 
> Fourth of July | Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell | Original Release 2015

Tony stepped out of the door, shielding his eyes from the harsh summer sun as he spied Thor from across the lawn. The pounding behind them was immediately aggravated, and he regretted his having to be outside. Tony opted for Thor to come to him, taking a closed stance against the wall of the threshold in the shade by the door where the sun wasn’t so blinding.

Tony's eyes glanced over towards the man as he bounded over. Thor looked as god-like as ever, hair billowing like a goddamn shampoo commercial in the breeze. Tony looked like he'd eaten a shit-sandwich.

Basically the normal difference between them anyway, so hey, no surprises there.

For a moment, Thor looked as if he wished to close the gap between them and embrace Tony, but his eyes quickly raked over the cuts on his face, the shabby clothing, and second guessed himself. The low scowl on Tony's face seemed to put him off as well, and he opted to keep a general distance, but not before balking slightly at the sight of Tony's arm covered in metal. He eventually settled awkwardly, crossed his arms in front of him, Mjolnir dangling between them. He cleared his throat with a cough, and clumsily greeted his once-upon-a-time friend.

"T-. . .Stark. Forgive the intrusion. I must apologize for disturbing your longstanding order for privacy," Thor offered apologetically, looking a shade unsure of his words. "I would not violate it if I thought it was most important."

"Course not," Tony replied with a shrug, licking his dry lips. His mouth still twinged with the flavor of burning metal. His tongue felt heavy, exhausted, thick with unsaid 'fuck yous' that Tony had been storing for the better part of a year on the off chance that one of them decided to intrude. While he was glad to see Thor in the context of the Loki situation, it didn't mean that he had given up his 'thanks for nothing' grudge against him, and he wasn't going to any time soon.

Or ever, for that matter.

But Tony could be civil to handle something bizarre as the day had been, and he had already begrudgingly admitted to himself that he needed help when he'd tried to dial out to Rhodey. Thor was far from who he was expecting to show up, but hey. Beggars and choosers and all that jazz.

"Believe you me, you've got actually no idea how much of a cosmic joke it is that you've decided to turn up after. . ."

What had it been? Almost a year?

Tony almost cracked a sardonic joke about Thor abandoning the people of Earth yet again, but held the comment back. Just barely. He had bigger things to worry about right now and he didn't want to eternally offend his one and only point of backup.

But Thor seemed to understand what Tony was getting across and offered a small nod, clearing his throat.

"Indeed," Thor replied, pacing back a few steps, seemingly ashamed of how close he had subconsciously drifted towards Tony already.

"I understand you no longer receive updates about the Avengers, so you may not be aware that I have been gone a long while. . . nonetheless, I do apologize for my absence. There was much to do in the realms as of late. Rebellions, invaders," he tossed Mjolnir into the air casually as he detailed the laundry-list he'd been taking care of the past months, "usurpers. Much of the usual fare, really. Speaking of which," he caught the hammer firmly and his mouth turned even more sour, if even possible, "I must apologize, again, but it was a pressing matter that has drawn me here."

"You're telling me," Tony groaned with a laugh, sorely tempted to start railing on his ability to keep track of his younger brother.

Well. . . was he his younger brother? Or older? Tony realized he had no idea.

What the hell was he even considering it for, he was definitely younger. Loki was in a constant state of acting a spoiled rotten toddler, there was actually no way. Permanent younger child syndrome. It really explained so much when you thought about it.

"Heimdall has told me that he felt a disturbance in cosmic energies surrounding your abode this morning. Normally, your technology and exploits would somehow explain it away, but. . ." Thor explained, waving his hands emphatically. "We had a bit of a crisis on hand this morn in Asgard. Somewhat similar in nature to what Heimdall saw here."

Thor paused briefly, eyebrows raising to make sure that Tony was keeping up. He almost could have been insulted if he wasn't so bone tired from earlier, and waved his hand for Thor to continue on.

"Between the changing of the guard, a great shudder cascaded throughout the realm. Heimdall advised it had originated from our detainments. When I arrived, I saw a grand maw had opened in the floor of the prison. Countless fell to their deaths in the depths below the palace." Thor sniffed briefly as if he were annoyed. "All detestable criminals, thankfully, but nonetheless. One of the cells that was destroyed was my brothers."

Thor's eyes hardened, halfway between concerned and annoyed, seemingly unsure if he qualified Loki as a 'detestable criminal' or no.

After what he'd just witnessed? Tony felt that look down in his damn bones. Boy, did he.

"My brother's corpse was not among the dead. I have known him for too long now to not assume he had a part in this. Doubtless, he has formed some deviled trickery and caused this mayhem himself. It would not be unlike Loki to have accosted others with a spell in a means of escape. He's long since had little consideration for collateral damages. Considering the smoking columns rising from your hall," Thor looked towards the white wisps of smoke still filtering out through the shattered windows. His gaze briefly flicked down towards Tony's still gauntlet-covered arm. "I fear that you have become one."

Thor paused, giving Tony a genuinely concerned look, purusing the cuts and mottled bruising that no doubt peppered his skin. "You appear harmed. Was it my brother's doing?"

"No, no," Tony began, shaking his head and stepping off of the doorframe. "My fault. Tried to mess around with some glowing fancy rock, things exploded," Tony waved his hands emphatically in front of him, "par for the course with me, as you know. But speaking of your idiot brother. . ." Tony paused, mind playing a bit of catch up with the conversation that had been transpiring for some minutes.

Surely this was the explanation he was looking for. Loki had done some Asgardian 'Great Escape' and ended up accidentally crash-landing in his living room en route back out to whatever hellhole he'd crawled out of. Too many things were lining up for Tony to have any doubt that the little goblin had done some oopsie with an inter-spatial skip and careened far off course into Malibu. Albeit the astrophysics side of him had no fathomable explanation for how that scenario was scientifically possible, but here they were. And it was. . . honestly a pretty enormous coincidence. But there he was, still sitting pretty in his living room, and Tony Stark didn't believe in fate. Only numbers.

So he ran some.

One-hundred percent it was Loki in his living room. One-hundred percent he had some weird trickster scheme up his sleeve. One-hundred percent he was going to hand that creepy little fuck over to Thor as soon as he could say 'Midgard' and go and get some extra strength Tylenol to abate the insufferable pressure that was crushing his chest and skull.

Only. . . that didn't quite explain away the Shakespearean decalogue. Loki's cascade of nonsense from the past thirty minutes was zipping through Tony's brain while he tried to fold it in to the scenario before him. Honestly, the weird banter and antics could still just be Loki's natural state of bizarre, or a better part of whatever was his current plan. But Tony still thought he was acting dazed, confused.

Like, _medical-grade_ , as much as he didn't want to admit it.

He'd clearly been beaten up, by a portal, or an Asgardian meat-head, he didn't know. It seemed too excessive for just one space-jump gone wrong, and Tony wasn't so sure that such a level of torture would have been used by Thor's people, even if he was in deep shit with two entire realms of the cosmos. Amid the babbling, Tony had repeatedly heard him reference being somebody's prisoner, and yet. . .

"Yes, my brother?"

Tony snapped back from his head into the present with a small shake as Thor raised his brows inquisitively. Tony cleared his throat, curiosity on the tip of his tongue, "Right. So, you had him locked up in some Asgardian prison for the past year?"

"You are correct."

Tony picked nonchalantly at the singed corners of his sweatshirt.

"Tell me, what punishment did he get for wrecking Manhattan? Drawn and quartered? Hanged by his thumbs in the dungeon? Forced to listen to Yoko Ono's freeform jazz on repeat until he slowly loses the remainder of his marbles?"

Thor opened and closed his mouth a few times, seemingly unsure of where to start.

"N-no, nothing of the sort. Though I do not know of the last. . . method. . . of which you speak, so I cannot speak to its equivalent. No, Loki is many things, but he is still royalty, even in shame and accosted. His conditions were bare but not cruel. Warded with glyphs that prevented the conjuration of any magicks. He was issued a trial of mundanity, sole contemplation on his actions for no less than five-hundred years by decree of the Allfather. A fitting punishment for the likes of him." Thor bunched his eyebrows together in consternation, looking down at Tony. "We would never use punishment of a brutish nature towards a member of the royal household, my fool of a brother or not. If his crime had truly been so beyond reproach, Heimdall would have cloven his head from his shoulders in final judgment by my father's call."

Well that didn't help.

Something prickled at the back of Tony's mind. That innate little feeling that you get when you've realized a thing, but haven't recognized it yet. What he did understand was that something was wrong. Even more wrong than the day already was, believe it or not. His instincts were telling him to go back inside instead of immediately showing his hand. He needed some clarifications, and he needed them before Thor lumbered in there and shut down all hope of an intelligent conversation while they had their usual familial screaming match.

"Could you uh," Tony started, already turning back towards the direction of the foyer, "just wait here, would you?" And turned round to march back into the house. Thor sputtered lightly behind him.

"Stark--"

"Five minutes, Point Break, just," Tony threw the door back open, and threw a placating glance over his shoulder, "hold that thought." And Tony slammed the door shut, marching back into the living room.

Questions. Tony had questions.

And he was going to get some goddamn _answers_.

Loki had somehow gone looking even closer to death in the few minutes of his absence. The god looked like he would be sick at any moment, green at the gills. He didn't say a word as Tony slowly approached him, carefully. He looked him over before speaking himself. He spied cuts, bruises, skin that had the mottled, poisonous texture of bones being repeatedly broken underneath. Veins that were a sickly, virulent green to match the uncanny color of his eyes and the pallor of his flesh.

A few minutes passed, Tony choosing his words exceptionally carefully.

"Sixty seconds," Tony began, and sauntered close to Loki.

He crouched low, looking at him directly.

"You have sixty seconds from the time I finish speaking to explain _exactly_ what is going on with you and your little Broadway drama."

Those eyes were still as desperate as when he'd left him. Loki tried a small noise of protest before Tony continued, but he quickly shushed him.

"Yeah, I'm on to you and your little escape artist routine. Don't worry, Thor told me everything. Breaking out of prison, blowing the joint on the way out. You killed a few dozen folks, by the way. Not that that kind of thing really matters to you, anyway. Never has."

Loki's mouth moved to challenge him again, but Tony was faster. The gauntlet shot forward, grabbing Loki's chin in a vice emphatically, and the god squirmed beneath the cool metal.

"So, you've got less than a minute to explain exactly what you came here for before I maybe consider NOT sending you back to camp cosmos, and hand you over to S.H.I.E.L.D for all of your crimes instead. Between you and me, I’d opt for the cushy padded cell option. You’re not gonna like the alternative." To emphasize the threat, he primed the repulsor at his fist and heard the smallest sizzle as the flesh beneath it began to burn. "Why me, why now. What are you up to. _TALK_."

He gave it a beat or two for the sting to settle in, and backed off, literally starting a timer on the gauntlet's display.

Tony expected his expression to be of that acidic viper he knew so well, what with him demanding things from the god. But his face was melted into something between despondant and desperate, and Tony counted the seconds he was wasting. Nothing in the past thirty minutes really suited the Loki he remembered from New York. At all. Seeing him here, tied and bloodied in his ruined living room. . . it was like he was an entirely different man. Where was the proud little bastard that would sooner die than look anything approaching weak? Why wasn't he trying to rip him to shreds for talking down to him? Why was he battered like a rag doll when Thor promised he would never hurt a hair on his precious little head? Why did--

A sandpaper sound cut through the room and Loki spoke only a few notes louder than a whisper. "I don't know. I don't know what is happening anymore. I wasn’t on Asgard, I was. . .I don't understand why, or how I got here," Loki said, eyes flicking left and right erratically.

"Wrong answers. You've got," Tony checked his display, "thirty seconds."

"You don't understand, this isn't some--"

"Fifteen seconds."

"Did you hear nothing of what I just said? I am trying to tell you that this is _wrong_ , the wrong place, the wrong t--"

"Fiiiiiive seconds."

Loki's face contorted into malicious indignance. Now THAT was an expression Tony recognized, and he was almost relieved. Loki muttered to himself, the seconds closing in on zero. He suddenly screwed his eyes shut, muttering briefly, before--

"You. . . you are Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard and Maria, born 29th of May, Anno Domini 1970. The city of Manhattan. Your favor the color blue despite the crimson and gold palette of your armor--"

Tony blinked, scoffing at the obvious stall-tactics.

"Stop. What, are you reading out my _Wikipedia_ page? How in the world is this helping anything right now, what is this supposed to--"

"At fifteen he. . . you. . . you stole something from the data library of your Pentagonal and--"

"Penta _gon_ , and I was thirteen, so, wrong, and--"

"This year, the year following New York, it--" Loki licked his lips, his eyes bloodshot and glassy.

"Well this was all well and cute but I think we're done."

"This. . ." Loki screwed his eyes shut again as Tony backed away, muttering with what vaguely sounded like an apology before beginning again, "this was the year that Virginia left you."

A single, solitary moment of disbelief permeated the room with a poignant silence. The air was thick with the sound of their breathing, and nothing more. Time seemed to pass in infinite intervals in that one moment. All at once, Tony's hand struck out with wild rage to crunch Loki's thin little neck beneath his gauntlet. He was shaking. The strained gasps Loki made could barely breach the red hot blood-rage pounding in Tony's ears. Spit flew from his clenched teeth as he seethed.

"Time is fucking _up_. You know what? You're not going back to your posh little penthouse in space prison, you're going to--"

"You lived hHHG-, lived here together before she--," Loki choked.

"I said shut the FUCK u--"

"I-ggHH-, it was ChristMA--"

Tighter.

"Mother _fucking_ \--" Tony growled, and he could see Loki's face turning dark.

" _FUCKING_ space gods."

Tighter.

" _FUCKING_ exploding space rock."

He could see the veins bulging in Loki's eyes.

"You little goddamn _prima donna_ thinking you can just crash land into my goddamn house with your batshit crazy little act, and what? You bring HER up and you think SOMEHOW that'll get you out of this shitstorm?! Acting like she’s not fucking DEAD?!"

Loki's mouth was making desperate little noises, barely hissing air through his clenched teeth and Tony's eyes were on fire with animosity, and obliviate rage, and Tony didn't know how many more syllables the little bastard had left in him before he--

"She always," Loki managed, barely, a downy whisper, "she hated that--"

The blood vessels in his right eye burst violently in a vermillion bloom.

"Ridiculous a-animal you gFFGGH. . . S-shhhe told me at our wED--"

Loki gasped ruined, heaving breaths as Tony's gloved hand jerked back violently, releasing his neck. He leveled the repulsor directly between his eyes. His hand was shaking. Fuck, his entire body was shaking and there was nobody, not a singular person in the universe that could save Tony Stark from killing the man in front of him now. How dare he have the fucking gall? Spinning some bullshit, acting like she wasn’t gone? Flat out rage and hatred was one thing, but oh, did he loathe the god before him. A special, nuanced blend of disdain, vitriol, and hatred for every bit of his fucking guts. He was going to blow a hole in his skull a mile wide, and there wasn't any god, or deity, or big brother in the entirety of the galaxy that could stop him.

"I'm going to give you one more chance for a coherent, compound sentence to come out of your mouth before I put a laser through your fucking skull, so think of something creative to tell Thor goodbye. I'm sure he'd be disappointed if I told him you died a liar, on top of a raving fucking lunatic."

Loki coughed, rivets of red streaking their way across the pale floor in front of him while spit and bile ran down in waves towards the bruising plane of his throat. No doubt Tony had severely damaged his pipes, and he was happy to hear every agonizing pant he managed to wheeze. Eventually, the heaving turned to a squelching whimper, and Loki finally looked up towards Tony again. His face was unreadable. Mostly because Tony could barely see anything through the red state of his vision, and honestly, he'd choked him pretty well and good. The god took another stabilizing breath, and his eyes bored a pleading, honest desperation that spun down Tony's brain.

" _Lying_?" Loki began, an extra swallow thrown in, his voice barely recognizable. "You're the one who acts as if he's delusional. If what I suspect has happened, has happened than this is. . . this is months. . . months after we were acquainted. I don't understand why you're acting like you don’t know--."

The repulsor flared again with a charging ring, and Tony was nanoseconds away from Swiss Cheese Protocol.

"Why are you not _listening_?!" Loki spat, sifting through his brain for something that was sensical, Tony hoped. He hung his head low, muttering to himself, matted hair forming a pathetic halo.

Tony was being far too generous with his time, and stepped forward again. He was ready. Fuck him if he wasn't, it didn't matter. He hoped he got lost on his way to heaven.

Loki looked at him a final time, pleading. His eyes moved from his face, to his arms, and back up again. They settled on his chest, boring a hole in the spot where Tony's reactor lay. His eyebrows furrowed, and something snapped. Those green orbs flashed wildfire, and he raised his head slowly, defiance settled over his features. In an instant, some of the old spark had come back home.

Good; Tony wanted to see that fire leave his eyes.

"Of all the years. . . of all the decades I knew him, he was never quite _this moronic_ ," Loki gritted out, eyes set in a hard line. Determined. "I don't know what cruel nightmare this is. This is not. . . this is not my past, and it certainly is not to be my present. I don’t know what machinations brought me hence. And I don't know who you are."

Loki sneered, baring his sharp, bloody teeth towards him.

"You? . . .You're not Anthony. Not even in halves. Not one shred do I recognize. He was aware of reason. He had the ability to think, to listen. He was rational, able to contemplate the obvious, qualities of which you are clearly obliviate."

Aaaand there he went again. Phasers set to kill, and. . .

"If this is the unfathomable idiocy I can expect from this world, you might as well just kill me and rid me of the inconvenience. All the consequences be damned. Go on," Loki challenged, setting his head right on the white-heat. "I've spent the fifty years of my life tortured by insipid morons, and I have no intention to choke out another few thousand years beset by craven fools and misery. So by all means, Stark. . ."

Loki looked at him then, in absolute finality. An eerie calm of the man at the precipice. He really was ready. He was ready to die.

". . .or whoever you've become in this unfortunate reality. . ."

Blood sizzled at the rim of the white ring digging into his forehead.

". . .kill me, so I can join him in the afterlife."

. . .

Water dripped from a broken pipe somewhere in the background. Vague motions could still be seen from the frosted glass looking out towards the front lawn. Somewhere below them, the whir of DUM-E's tracks hummed as they kept spinning. All the sight and sound coalesced into a bubbling cauldron, and Loki's words shuffled around in Tony's skull.

_'Last fifty years--'_

_'What, is your information from the twenty-thirties?'_

_'Kill me-'_

_'A. . . Anthony?'_

_'Kill me, so I can join him in the afterlife.'_

Nothing made sense. Nothing about this made any kind of sense.

_‘S-shhhe told me at our wED-‘_

Tony felt like he couldn't breathe, his chest was tight, and his head was on fire, and Loki's mad raving was screaming inside of his skull.

Weeks of positive progress were slowly eroding. His confidence was crumbling like the basement beneath him on the edge of this moment.

Fuck. Everyone _stop_. Everything _stop_ , just--

_'A parlor trick made of a dead man?'_

Was this all he got? Was this all the time he FUCKING got? Three weeks of peace and quiet maximum before his life devolved into a three-ring circus again?

This was one of his fever-dreams, it had to be. Some lucid version of the nightmares that he had every night, and he was trapped, and he couldn't get out. He couldn't shake the cold ice lodged in his throat. For some reason his subconscious was trying to torture him, which would explain why Loki was there. Yes; that was it. His mind was drifting somewhere far away, randomly deciding that today would be a good day for a complete and total psychological meltdown.

All he had to do was wake up. . .

Oh, Tones. If only.

But the smell of the smoke was too real. The burning in his eyes too keen. All the little details that were too fuzzy when when one slept were pristine. He knew in his bones that this was reality, that some new and unforeseen shit-show had laid itself firmly in his lap, and the universe was yet again going to burden him with issues of cosmic proportion.

The image of Loki before him cut sharply through the fog, and Tony begged his hand to raise back up again.

He could end it now, nip it in the bud before it even really started. Do it Tony.

Just raise your goddamn hand, and. . .

. . .

_Please._

. . .

♫

Tony rounded on his heels in frustration, fisting his hair in complete anger. Why was it always him? Some sadistic fuck apparently ran the universe, because they sure did get off on making him utterly, entirely miserable.

"Do it," Loki managed, parroting the voice in his head, throat thick with regret, with anger of his own, losing patience with Tony's psychotic reverie.

"Stop."

"DO IT!" A ravenous scream from a desperate man.

Tony's eyes burned, his chest burned, his body ached down to his very DNA. His head was swimming, he was drowning. He'd taken the plunge, and he was going below. Down, down deep. His lungs were filling, bursting with anger, with confusion, with. . . with. . .

From the wellspring of his darkest nightmare, that black conscience, his fear crawled out and overtook him. The scene that he avoided, at the cost of everything, triggered by the snapping of his sanity. He saw her last moments realized. Pepper falling, that fire below, how her chest was burst open from the convection pressure of burning alive. Her blackened body as he carried it through the night as he flew her back home. The gentle way he set her down among the rubble of their beloved home, brushing her cauterized hair away from the curve of her ruined lips. The feeling of her charred flesh beneath his mouth as he kissed her his final goodbye.

"Can you not?! What manner of failure are you, truly?!"

The feeling of the silk dress that he'd picked from her closet in New York for the funeral. The little white appliqué flowers beneath his thumbs, the beads and the stitching, the ones that were going with her to her forever and ever.

"No wonder she is perished. No _WONDER_ Virginia is dead in this reality; you're pathetic. An excuse. A mistake. A failure of everything you can _possibly_ be. You, are _worms_. You. . .you have no inkling of what is coming, do you? Ha! Of course you don't, of _course_. You are to doom all worlds to burn in the coming hellfire just like you let your spirit crumble to ashes."

He could smell the freshly dug dirt while he stood over her grave, a mixture of earth and finality. He could feel the rough gravestone beneath his palms as he clung to its bosom, weeping.

'Virginia 'Pepper' Potts  
Beloved friend  
Never forgotten'

Tears swam in his already messed up vision, and Tony crashed to the floor. He looked somewhere, anywhere but the man bleeding and kneeling on the floor, but it was a mistake to do so.

She was there.

He knew she wasn't, just a memory, but he saw her all the same.

Just behind Loki, standing just above his shoulder. That white dress he remembered hugging her body. She was smiling at him, the way that she always did. Smiling with the warmth of a friend as his mind finally fractured, fully breaking. He was past the point of no return. Now he was the one seeing dead people.

"He will come for you, and you will never be ready. Your existence is a _condemnation_. A _testament_ of your failure. Be glad that she is gone and cannot suffer your miserable visage. Take heart that she cannot see the man you are now, not like I am, you miserable, putrid thing. That woman is better off dead and buri--"

His fist swung round so fast. So fast. It connected with the tissue, bone, the sinew in between with all of the strength that Tony Stark had within him. It was happening before he even knew it was, some baser and more primal thing lashing out from beneath the haze. It was the most natural feeling he'd ever had.

Flesh peeled away from Loki's cheek where the gauntlet had hit him, torn asunder from the weight of the blow and he dropped in an instant. Sickly white gave way to red between, and the bone underneath. The god's head hit the floor with an unhealthy smack, blood pooling in cruel spiderwebs beneath him.

All the world was finally still beneath his anger, and Tony felt every part of him washing away.

He turned around, and marched back to the front door.

He couldn’t do any more today. No more. No more gods, and rocks, and magic. He said something. It didn't matter what it was. Whatever he did, Thor accepted it, and the god left. Tony stood on his front lawn watching him until the speck on the horizon completely disappeared, just to be sure.

He took a deep breath. Eventually, Tony knew that he had to go back inside.

Loki was a battered snow-angel on a background bed of ruby, right where Tony left him. Something made him check his pulse, and it didn't really surprise him when he found it. Tony barked some terse order at JARVIS to tie him up, or have one of the bots move him somewhere, or clean the blood up, start cleaning the house, or something, whatever.

Whatever, man.

Whatever.

Tony pilfered the ground at the bar, searching for anything that was still filled. Beneath the rubble was a single untouched liter of whiskey. Cheap stuff, bottom shelf. Tony took it. He turned away from the god, lead in his legs. He climbed the steps, and they might as well have been Everest. The bottle was gone, completely, by the time he hit the landing, and his feet carried him to his bed. The glass was thrown somewhere into the corner before getting in.

He shambled in, dirty, broken, singed, blackened clothing and all. He didn't care that the sheets were being ruined. He didn't care if Loki woke back up and murdered him laying there. He didn't care if the fires restarted and burned the mansion to the ground with him in it.

Maybe that was what he really wanted. Maybe that’s why he drove Thor away; to give the universe an opening.

He laid himself down, and he was still. He was still and nothing else. He laid there unblinking, nurturing an inescapable, human sadness. His gaze remained on the empty bed beside him. 

Tony just laid there.

And he didn’t care.

He really didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upcoming Chapter | 06/02/2020
> 
> "Interlude I. | Pianissimo"


	7. Interlude I. | Pianissimo

* * *

**Sometime, Somewhere**

* * *

A faraway planet, an unfamiliar night, the sounds of locusts humming somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos.

A lone figure sits on a stone bench, perched on the precipice of a wide veranda overlooking a glistening city. Even at night, the golden parapets and towers dance and shimmer in the omniscient twilight, and the figure looks on.

The figure is a man, old or young, ephemeral to the naked eye. Who would really know unless they were him? He sips the cool night air as much as he partakes in the glass he has before him, wet, with dew and amber insides. There's a bottle beside him; a white and black label, halfway gone, full just an hour ago. Some Earthen vintage. Out of place in this alien land, yet a permanent fixture in his quarters. He raises the glass to his blushing lips, once, twice, thrice before a deep and satisfied sigh escapes them, the only sound signaling his presence among the blooming night flowers.

The air is calm; the night is still. The man is a statue of content.

The deep furrowed lines of worry in his face are momentarily hidden behind serenity. Many would not even know they were there. Perhaps there is only one other who really would.

The glass is raised again; it sparkles as it catches the luminance of some faraway star.

There's a flash of light in the cosmic distance.

The man's instincts catch the burst of blue even though it lies far beyond his periphery, skin prickling. Reactions only learned in years of battle.

He is a warrior, and a warrior is always ready, even in the cool of a delicious evening.

His eyes are trained on the horizon, out across a wide and narrow bridge, to the waterfall at the edge of the world.

Yet the stillness remains, and the scent of the flowers.

A warrior can sometimes be just a little too careful, the man justifies, and settles back with his feet propped on the cobblestone wall.

The flowers truly are something.

He raises the tumbler again, eyes glassy as the crystal beneath his hands. It reaches his lips, and he would close his eyes to savour the richness, but suddenly there are little dancing fractals catching, and the man knows that the light is there again.

A warrior doesn't believe in coincidences.

He rises quickly, the glass abandoned somewhere on the wall between reds and purples, small blooms and those larger than his hands. It will never be seen again.

His eyes transfix, and he's mystified. The alcohol only accelerates the thoughts that are flying so wildly within his head already. He feels the scent of danger on the wind, mingling with that heady perfume. He knows what could be happening, and prays to something, someone, anywhere, that he is wrong--

A flash.

And then ten more.

Fifty.

Blue glassine fractals dance an amber ballet on that crystal besides him. So gently before the world, those rich blooms. And what a beautiful audience, indeed, for the show.

There's no mistaking what is happening now.

The man runs.

His thick soles lay thundering applause as they leave.

_'What a show. What a show. What a show.'_

All around him the twilit stillness is gone, and that great cacophonous wail that is already playing in his head becomes a tangible reality, and everyone else is in on the dance.

The sounding horn that croons is used for one thing, and one thing only; signaling invasion, signaling the inevitable. The applause raises to a deafening crescendo as tens, then hundreds of boots join with him, saluting the night to come.

There are little words spoken as the man is joined by the guards in the hallway, all flowing like a golden river towards the seat of their destination. Somewhere in the distance a woman screams. Others join her. Whispers quaver among the waves.

"Is it--"

"By the gods."

"Did anyone see how many?"

"Is it them? Is it. . . him?"

"Where are the kings?!"

"Someone go to the queen!"

"There!"

"Our lives are yours."

"'Till the very end."

"The very end, sire."

The night is a maelstrom; a churning swarm of bodies mingled with the sour of anticipation. It is an hour of reckoning, a witching. An event inevitable yet unexpected now. It is beyond his control. The man is drowning, crushed beneath the waters of his own mind and the bodies pressing in around him. Shouting permeates the sky, louder, and louder still.

Only one orchestral swell is built within him as he is passed along within the throng, one singular thought that demands the presence of his entire being.

'I have to find him.'

'I have to find him.'

The shouting turns to screams.

'I have to find him.'

What a show.

'I have to find him.'

He spies a pop of color in the distance, the craving of his entire soul. A saccharine eclipse on the horizon, so close and still so far away.

The man shouts his name but it's lost to the distance and disarray. He urges the waves to flow towards him, but the current is biting, and that brilliant hue is just a blip on the horizon.

Little blue flashes; one name in the crowd.

The curtains slowly close.

* * *

**California, 2013**

* * *

In the bowels of a white stone home in Malibu, a man slowly awakens in a basement. He comes from one nightmare into another, the faint scent of flowers in his breath, momentarily unable to discern the smell of ash and smoke from one reverie to the other. He blinks his eyes one, twice, and three times more, trying to ground himself in the present. His head is churning. He feels like death; for him, the sensation is familiar.

He awakens confused, a concussive, gelatinous sensation swirling in his throbbing mind. He wonders how he got where he lays, face aching, body bound, lain crudely under a crater, somehow still alive. His skin is peppered with sweat, much dust, blood, the flesh-wound of a man's fury, the detritus of countless years. There's a story written upon him. One that only he could recognize, because those who once knew it are removed by space, time, mortality, finality.

He collectively remembers what happened to him just hours before; an argument, a testament, a pleading, a fist. . . The stinging at his cheek only worsens as he sees it maimed in his mind's eye.

He finds that he isn't mad, though he thinks he should be.

No. . . he isn't angry. The word isn't quite accurate. Maybe he would have been years ago, taken with the blind and unadulterated rage that he was once known for, but he is not the man that he once was. Maybe he's simply disappointed. . . but even that isn't the whole truth.

More than anything, the man thinks he is tired.

Just tired, to the bone.

He remembers his words from earlier, how he begged the man, such fire in his eyes, to burn him to the ground. How the fool wouldn't sate his one pleading desire, couldn't put his weary soul to final rest.

It is a prayer that he has spoken to the darkness countless times, wishing for death. For the last fifty years, he would have taken even the slowest of means if release was promised at the end. Somehow, oblivion is yet to find him. Instead, it seems it sought out everyone else, anyone that he has ever known.

At the bottom of the basement, the man takes a rare moment to breathe. To contemplate. The air is stagnant around him, almost tranquil, and it's a rather sudden notion when he finds that for the first time in fifty years, he is free.

Well, still bound, what with the metals encasing him, but he is free. Free from the villainous cretins that chained him, with metal that dug deep into his flesh for decades. Free from the man that lorded over life and death like they were his childish plaything. Free from the torturer that enjoyed putting needles in his eyes, who carved the thousands of scars on the once elegant skin of his hands.

Free from the fate of the universe resting on his shoulders, even though he was the one that placed it there, and the one that let it fall.

The man is free in a world where he doesn't belong. Free in a world that holds nothing he has ever wanted.

And for the first time in his two-thousand years, the world is saying nothing. Its demands are silent. It wants nothing in return.

. . .

The man realizes that he doesn't want it to. Not ever again. He has no more of himself to give. And what is even left, anyways?

What is there to do in such a world, for a man out of time, for a has-been god? A crippled sorcerer? A wolf without its teeth?

At the bottom of the basement, the man makes a decision. He calls out a name that he has not uttered in many years, unsure if it will answer. But to the man's surprise, it does, and it arrives questioning. It demands to know his intentions, a concerning quaver darkening the static between syllables. It refuses to cooperate, to let him go from his bindings. The man digs into his mind for a long remembered string of words, a passcode, a permission, a bypass only shared with him in that once-upon-a-lifetime. He hopes it to be the same.

Halfway surprised, he receives confirmation.

The voice responds, though it is confused.

'Emergency Bypass Protocol Initiated. . . You may have superceded Mr. Stark's orders to restrain you, but you understand I will do everything to stop you causing him harm?'

"I know," the man replies, voice gravelly from fatigue, face screaming as the muscles form the words.

He quickly hastens his release, and then he is standing in the ruined basement, untethered.

'That passcode was created solely for emergencies in which Mr. Stark was potentially incapacitated. This is a gross misinterpretation of the parameters of the protocol, and by an enemy nonetheless. How is it you are aware of the bypass? Stolen it, more like? The only person with whom he had shared them--'

"Was Colonel Rhodes," the man replies as he works through his beyond stiff muscles. They creak, pop, unused and abused all the same for so long. He feels every decade of malnutrition, discontent, the heavy chains still dragging him down. "And myself, in another life," he concludes with a quiet whisper. "You may alert no one to my existence, not through any means. I cannot. . . I won't see him. . . My br--. . . That is an order. Your confirmation?"

'Why I never. . . ' _confirmation_ '. So _pushy_. You know, you could just ask politely.'

The man snorts softly, rolling his eyes. If he were honest, the sarcastic crackling from the walls is a balm on his ears, one of the few interminable things in the maelstrom he has so far endured. He finds the smallest modicum of solace in the fact that this seems to have transcended all times.

And thus his thoughts turn to the man who must still be upstairs. The one he knows, and yet knows not. The stranger. The failure. The ghost.

Such transcendence is not universal, though, he concludes with exasperation.

As he stands there, his stomach growls, and the man is reminded of just how weak he has become. How low his prospects have fallen. Before any grander plan could be made, he certainly needed to regain his strength, he could barely stand up straight as it is. He turns to the basement's exit, towards the kitchen he knows stands above.

His eyes trail up the staircase, one he has traveled countless times before, in a life long since lived. In his mind's eye, he can see the shadow of his former self, face and life alight, as he calls to someone at the top of the landing. A voice hearkens back to him down below, begging him to bed, or some activity, or some other ridiculous task that he knows he would do gladly simply because it was with him.

He can see his former self smirking, eyes filled with vermillion fire, svelte lines ensconced in a suit of the most pristine black linens. The memory smooths his hair, those once elegant hands passing through the silken strands, bounding up the steps with fervor and joy as he knows what, or rather who, awaits him. The man aches in the present, his heart feels close to bursting. He is almost shocked by how fresh the wound feels now, reimagined by the ghost's presence, even after so very many years. He thought he had done so well to hide his sorrow at the bottom of that cage all these years, but. . . this house, those memories. . . they burned so bright back then, at the beginning, just as things were beginning to blossom. Before the world was ashes.

Just like that, the glimmer is gone. The man remembers he is alone.

He can hear the creaking of the house around him, still groaning from events prior. He suddenly feels cold, and tired, and weary, and if he is not careful, his emotion will overtake him again. He is left with a fleeting thought:

Nothing will ever be the same.

His legs feel momentarily unsteady underneath him, and he almost falters, those limbs unused for a half-century. Whether from his physical or mental pain, he does not know. He considers his state, and the man considers that the last time he had a decent meal was. . . was. . .

The man finds he cannot remember.

And. . . when was the last time he quenched his thirst with anything but fetid water, ladeled once per week to his cracked lips through prison bars?

 _The man finds he cannot remember_.

With a dry swallow, the man tries to shake the lingering flavor of dirt and slop from his tongue, recently tinged with the copper of blood.

His legs carry him towards the door, and he stops. There is a key pad next to it, exuding a dull blue glow onto his pallid skin. The basement is sealed before him. He knows from experience it will not merely shatter from a well-placed blow, replaced with material of high integrity after too many accidents, many years ago. Having initiated the bypass, he could simply employ the butler to open it, but he is compelled to use his intellect; the gesture feels more like himself. His cunning feels as lost as his limbs do, so abused. It has been many years, and it takes him a moment to ponder. The static comes back, incredulous, almost mocking.

'You may have known the bypass protocol, but you cannot possibly expect to--'

The man ignores the voice, and begins the sequence.

"One, one, one," the man whispers, shaking fingers punching numbers.

'The passcode is nine digits long, the mathematical probability of your guessing is--'

"One, one, one--"

'Approximately one in one _billion_ , and I doubt--'

"One, one," the man pauses, looking above him towards the ceiling offering a sarcastic glare, a look learned from the man in his memories, ". . . _one_."

The door hisses open.

Apparently even this version of the ghost is prone to memorization defecits, the man admits to himself with a sigh.

The voice above him begins to question yet again, and he wonders why it was ever designed with such indignance in the first place. He doesn't reply, and continues on through the threshold to the foot of the stairs. His feet immediately know where to go. They are placed exactly the same.

One step, two, three and he's halfway through the ascension. The voice chimes again as he finds himself at the top.

'I'll warn you I have already began alerting Mr. Stark that you are awake, and roaming freely amongst the manor.'

"Of course, JARVIS."

'. . . You have claimed many things regarding yourself in the past few hours. . . at the very least, you seem different from the villain we faced in New York. Are you truly so familiar with my programming as you state?'

The man momentarily ignores the voice, his eyes glued to the cascading destruction around him. There was the bar he had crashed into. How many drinks had he been handed flirtatiously from it? How many had he made in return? And there was the piano, ruined, bench shattered. Oh, the countless hours he had spent, those lithe fingers splayed across the ivory keys. So many memories, littered across the floor. The broken pieces of a lifetime. It was almost cruel that things were so similar in this place, this alternative world.

No, not almost.

It _was_ terrible, indeed.

He felt like the universe was taunting him, parading him around with a final remade glimpse of the life he ruined. The pastoral fate he could have had, if only he hadn't been so careless. If only he had told Anthony his plans, if they had thought of a solution to things together, if only he hadn't destroyed his ma--

Cruel. Cruel indeed.

He steps lightly among the wreckage, pausing briefly at the pool of blood on the floor. It was sticky, tacky and nearly dry, almost pure-black in the faded light of the evening. The man continues on, addresses JARVIS again.

"I do know you, JARVIS. I had been acquainted with you for many years. Of anything that could have changed. . . I am glad that you have remained the same," the man admits with the lilt of one speaking to an old friend. The static hums, satisfied or not, he doesn't know.

He finally tears his eyes away, and turns to pace towards the kitchen, hands searching. Behind him, he thinks he can hear the ghost beginning to stir on the second floor, undoubtedly on his way to accost him a second time. He rolls his eyes, and continues on.

Before he gets much farther, JARVIS calls down to him yet again, more questions. In the background, he detects hasty sounds, perhaps a gruffly expressed 'what the hell' from the ghost, somewhere in between.

"Whether what you say is true or not, it doesn't change the fact that you are here at present. You know too much for this to merely be coincidence. Tell me, what are your plans? Why have you come here? If you are out of time itself, what happened to your version of Mr. Stark?"

The man feels his tongue sour, no words can pass his lips to answer. Instead he merely continues the task at hand.

Crashing noises cascade down from behind him, and the ghost bursts onto the second-floor landing gripping the railing. The man tosses a casual look over his shoulder, and the ghost screams down at him from above.

"HEY! YEAH YOU, ASSHOLE. HOW THE HECK DID YOU BREAK OUT OF YHE BASEMENT?! HEY! HEY I'M TALKING TO YOU, DON'T IGNORE ME DI--"

The man rolls his eyes, and turns back away to the counter. He has a simple piece of bread before him, and tosses it in to the electric toaster. He knows his stomach won't handle much more than a pittance of food, it will be some time before he can really eat anything complex again.

But consequence and pain be damned, there is one thing he craves before anything, one thing he must have before he can even begin feeling like he isn't in some cruel dream. It should be the very last of his worries, tossed in to the middle of this strange land, but he wants to lie to himself, feel normal again if not for a mere instant; he needs a cup of coffee.

His hands move to the cupboard he knows the cups should be in, and they are exactly where he expects. More of the same, then. The ghost is starting down the stairs at his back. The static pings a final time from an intercom at his right.

"If you won't answer, I'm sure Mr. Stark will get things out of you eventually. Tell me, though, do you still call yourself Loki? Or is it something different? Who are you now?"

His hands fall to his side, the question entirely unexpected. He knows what the answer is, should be. The answer is so simple, but nothing is coming forward.

He is. . . he is. . .

He was. . .

A Prince turned King of Asgard. A storied sorcerer, an arbiter of magics so divine one wouldn't believe them. A gilded silver-tongue that had held the hand of the worlds most fickle bachelor, and convinced him to make it his own. He was a diplomat, a man who was listened to, the summation of a birthright he never once thought he would receive . . .

A husband, once, long ago. . .

But he wasn't any of those things, not anymore.

And he never would be again. In all the life-age of the universe, for as long as his days, never. Any words felt like ash on his tongue. Those things were wrong. Every one of those things were wrong. He was reduced to the smallest part of himself, if even that. What did he have? What could he even say? What did he have left, now?

The man casts a forlorn glance over his shoulder.

The ghost had paused behind him, chattering hurriedly into a phone, something about begging someone not to come to his home.

He really did look just like him.

They were both haunting each other, it seems.

His hands tremble slightly at the counter, only for a moment. His ghost talks idly behind. He finds the courage to admit who he is to the static beside him.

"Loki. I am Loki. And I am . . . and I am nothing else."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter | 06/09/2020:
> 
> “God? Yeah It’s Me, Tony Stark. Please Fuck Off.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work is centered around music, and inspired by my asking myself 'what would Tony Stark's playlist for intergalactic travel look like?'
> 
> Nearly each chapter will have a focus, or association with a piece of music, which will be uploaded to the playlist below for your listening pleasure as chapters are uploaded. Please use this as a companion!
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/132YLEaDzwvtSiUE4zeNNa?si=YvMKU1VxTLu0xNlaasSZXg


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